Category Archives: philosophy

Introducing Political Philosophy: Some Straussian Resources

philosophy, politics

I just saw this page dedicated to Vermeer and wanted to become an art historian on the spot. There’s something marvelous about assembling and organizing information well – it really does empower students and make things easier for teachers and scholars.

Truth be told, I would love to link to resources on Vlastos or Rawls or Pocock or other schools of thought, but I don’t know them well enough. So I’m sticking to Straussian stuff, hoping someone will make a wiki on another site and we can get a collection of primary sources, secondary sources, blurbs and introductory articles going. My goal here is to get started, so I’m not aiming to be comprehensive. I’m actually aiming to be done in a half-hour.

Political Philosophy & Leo Strauss himself

Ancient Philosophy

Medieval

Modern

This isn’t a lot, I know. But I think there’s a virtue to the fact that resources by “names” are rare. A good wiki will start cataloging and reviewing papers and dissertations on topics by lesser known people. Lord knows we need that nowadays – the way academia is, you’d think there were 3 people who are allowed to read books and have opinions on them.

On Crispin Sartwell’s discussion of “kalos:” What does knowing have to do with nobility or beauty?

philosophy, plato, xenophon

1. Encountered Crispin Sartwell’s “Six Names of Beauty” at the bookstore. Saw that he had a chapter on kalos, the ancient Greek word meaning “noble” or “beautiful.” Started to give his chapter a read, thinking it dissertation relevant, and encountered this:

The Greek words for beautiful (kalos) and beauty (to kalon) have moral as well as aesthetic force. They refer to “nobility” as well as what we would think of as direct visual beauty. But these terms also have an epistemic dimension; they are connected to the idea of knowledge. All of these meanings might be brought together in a notion of “illumination:” the kalos is above all, we might say, what is drenched in light. The noble soul is the clearly illuminated soul, and such a soul will be beautiful. (Sartwell 88)

I agree with Sartwell that yes, kalos has moral and aesthetic force. And yes, it is also “connected to the idea of knowledge.” Where I disagree strongly is with the noble soul being “clearly illuminated.” That implies the noble soul is knowable, and that’s a much stronger claim than kalos being “connected to the idea of knowledge.”

Sartwell continues his case by going to Plato and linking the erotic desire for simple, knowable, all-clarifying truth in the Symposium with ascending from the cave in the Republic. There are Forms which are pure knowledge; we lust after them and strive after them. That means truth, beauty and goodness are all wrapped up, and if it seems Plato is giving us something a bit too simplistic, he is purposely doing so. Kalos seems to refer to the quality of truth to be, in a way, simple. We need to be able to apprehend it and use it when not admiring its elegance.

2. The main problem I have with Sartwell’s discussion is that he has it exactly backward. When I encounter kalos, it’s more like “shining forth,” stupidly obvious. The noble comes from the beautiful – the link is direct. Forget Plato for a second, think Homer. Someone who is noble and beautiful might be descended from the gods and certainly will make claims to rule over the rest of us. Aren’t they a better class of human being, maybe truer to being human than the rest of us?

The questions I’m raising are the heart and soul of Greek philosophy, the reason for the elaborate metaphysics and metaphor in many thinkers. If you tie kalos to the Forms too quickly, you miss what the dialogues are addressing. Case in point: the Symposium is about moderating the other speakers and perhaps Alcibiades. You’ll note that Socrates introducing Diotima to the conversation is quite radical; the other speakers, including Aristophanes, are adamant in defending pederasty in one way or another. You’ll also note that the need for Alcibiades to be moderated is a recurrent theme in a number of other works that give us the history of the time. Similarly, the cave image in the Republic is not a strict ascent, if it is possible to ascend at all. That cave is everyday life for all of us – we all worship likenesses. The city is the cave and grounds “common sense” for us; remember what Socrates says about people coming back down into the cave after having seen the light? You know, that little bit about not being believed and maybe getting beat up?

So before any talk about the epistemic side of kalos, one has to acknowledge that it serves a unique purpose in Plato. Plato is well aware that kalos is about political claims, which include claims about the gods. A kalos kai agathos – a “noble and good” man, a gentleman – wouldn’t want to know more than is needed. So how, exactly, does the epistemic side reveal itself?

3. There are several ways, but they don’t lead to natural philosophy directly. A discussion about generosity, something most would consider noble, does not necessarily break down and turn into one about cosmology. What happens, I think, is that kalos gets transformed into the question of how one leads one’s life. This is what we consider philosophy, but remember: philosophy is something you can be put to death for in ancient Greece.

So again, this is strange and subtle and hard to track. Sometimes, the word’s meanings are intentionally split off from each other. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, the sections I’m writing on use “kalos” almost exclusively as noble or fine. “Beauty” is strictly a secondary consideration, as Socrates is talking to military leaders and politicians about civic affairs. Only later does Socrates encounter a very beautiful woman, and kalos becomes beautiful, but at the loss of noble overtones. All of those chapters, I should say, are about how one leads one’s life.

In Plato, the discussion of kalos I can think of depends on a heck of a balancing act. I’m going to speculate and see what happens. One can start with the question of what “the beautiful” means for our trying to know. I’m thinking of something like Benardete’s Phaedrus commentary, which I know I’ll mangle. What I can get from it is that knowing is tied in with desire, but it isn’t as simple as “we lust after knowledge.” Most of us don’t; the parallel is more important for understanding how both work. What’s relevant for our present blogpost: when you fall in love, you want to explain to the beloved why you love them and have them agree. In other words: you want the beloved to fall in love with the image you have of them, and this unites you two in love. There are obviously a million catches here, not the least of which that you and the beloved both change not just during but because of this process. You put why you love in speech; your “first sight” changes and evolves. The beloved sees the speech or images you put forth and agrees or disagrees on his/her terms, however s/he is seeing. It looks like knowing each other is hopeless, but again, this isn’t about knowledge strictly. The problem of knowing parallels this.

Most people try to know things and also strive for things besides knowledge. Yeah, these are two vastly different things that sometimes correspond but can also diverge significantly. Think about how crazy overachievers are in high school, doing things like “science club” and “volleyball” back to back. It doesn’t add up at all except in the sense of going to a (noble and good) college. We need something to reconcile the knowing and striving: we do both and we somehow consider this sane behavior, when we should know better to start. The answer is “the beautiful.” Maybe: mind wants to see it, soul wants to be it, eros wants to apprehend it. But the beautiful isn’t the Forms necessarily. It’s more a construct created from the result of being a lover described above. It’s in flux and is anything but simple for a serious knower.

References

Benardete, Seth. “Socrates and Plato: The Dialectics of Eros” in The Archaeology of the Soul. St. Augustine’s Press, 2012

Sartwell, Crispin. Six Names of Beauty. Routledge, 2004.

Xenophon, “On the Cavalry Commander”

philosophy, politics, xenophon

With thanks to Jonathan Culp

Xenophon, “On the Cavalry Commander”

On the surface, this is an exceedingly practical text. Xenophon tells us to make sure the horses in service don’t have bad legs, that the men can mount their horses, etc. There is a catch: in Memorabilia III.3, Socrates has an interlocutor who is an elected cavalry commander. Xenophon declares that he knows the presented conversation happened. This is not a claim he makes about many of his chapters. Socrates gives much of the exact same advice written in the first book of On the Cavalry Commander to the interlocutor, who comes off as extremely ignorant. As it stands, I’m developing an argument that Socrates’ practical advice in III.3 is actually about nobility and the soul. I suspect there is less truly about horses in both writings and a lot more about philosophy and human nature, some kind of direct hint about how Socrates educated Xenophon directly.

However, there is an enormous difference between Xenophon in On the Cavalry Commander and Socrates in Memorabilia III.3 that is revealed by the opening. Socrates never mentions gods or piety in giving the commander advice. He focuses on provision, training, motivation and obedience for horses and men alike. But Xenophon opens his treatise such:

The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and to bring yourself, your friends and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage (Cavalry Commander 1.1).

Xenophon is not shy about repeatedly mentioning the service the commander owes to the gods. Is Xenophon more pious than Socrates? Hardly – the morality of this passage is extremely questionable. In return for giving the gods control over your thoughts, you get affection, glory and advantage. This is an attempt to bribe the gods. The “thoughts, words and deeds” that matter the most bring success, not justice or living within one’s means (contrast with: Mem. I.1.19). It is worth noting that Xenophon talks about the gods so much in his little treatise that he apologizes for it later (Cav. 9.8).

The full significance of piety in the treatise requires one to see competing claims about divinity. Xenophon is abundantly clear about the cavalry commander’s perspective. The other opinion comes about a roundabout way, as the figure of Socrates is hinted at. Xenophon’s practical advice is never just that. To take perhaps the most important example: it is sensible advice that one who wants a horse’s feet to be stronger will have it stand on large stones outside of the stable (they didn’t have horseshoes), making that horse as a matter of habit get used to the hardness (I.16). Xenophon gives a hint that this advice is central to the plan of his work, as he tells the reader that if he tries this, he will “believe in the rest of my rules.”

This passage reminds of Socrates’ hardened bare feet, one aspect of his disdain for wealth and his own continence (cf. Mem I.2.5). It only reminds, as we can only speculate. Much later in the treatise, Xenophon discusses how a thoroughly superior cavalry unit would come about, one that would make one’s opponents look like amateurs. The cavalry that will almost literally fly in difficult situations and over rough terrain – Xenophon says they will be like “birds to beasts,” the “sound from the lame” – that cavalry is trained and has hardened feet (Cav. 8.2-3). He goes further, saying that equestrian exercises are no work at all, for they are the activities where man comes closest to flight (8.6). If one is still not convinced of the value of cavalry, there is this: through war, states get happiness from the gods; no other competition among men is like it (8.7).

Our speculation is beginning to see the outline of a pattern. Men compete not just to be better than other men. They are trying to make claims over other men, trying to show that what other men could not do they can do. In other words: man is the species that is emphatically not content with being man. (One can argue that the text most Greeks know is Homer. A figure like Achilles cannot simply be ignored when reading Plato and Xenophon.) Xenophon is quietly pushing the idea that a superior warrior is near godlike while overtly pushing a more conventional piety. Not to make a bad pun, but to stay grounded, we have to try not to think about a lot of training making someone look like they can fly. We’re going to have to wonder why someone with rather tough soles would choose to stay in the city. The answer, I think, lies in an allusion near the end of the treatise. The gods, who know all things, give warnings through a variety of means; a commander must do his best to take them seriously (9.9). Socrates had the same warnings (Mem I.1.3). To a degree, to want the power of a god is to deny oneself direct access to divine knowledge. Why would someone truly godlike compete?

On Philosophy and Religion

philosophy

1. On the one hand, philosophy has nothing to do with religion. One can speculate about the cosmos without coming anywhere near a moral teaching. One can have radical political views from what might be considered philosophic insights – you know, much like every other person – and find one’s views or way of life challenged more by comedy or mass media than anything else.

And yet, the tension between philosophy and revelation is twofold. First, some who think a lot about revealed religion consider philosophy its greatest alternative or threat. But the second tension is far more interesting, far more curious. Benardete has a line in his “Strauss on Plato” essay where he talks about Strauss’ reading of Alfarabi. It seems that for Alfarabi this held true: to bring philosophy into a world that did not have the slightest clue about it was also to bring back the “true form” of revelation.

I’ve been wondering about this a lot lately. For me, the problem starts at the level of the obvious. There’s a difference between a culture that purports to be moral and being moral or religious. Everyone knows this – the difference is most manifest in those who kill for their culture or religion and those who feel less threatened, who see grace as a more or less private thing. The difference is huge: we’re talking about incredible acts of savagery, ignorance and bigotry on the one hand and people either embracing ecumenism or a “live and let live” line of thought on the other. It is tempting to say that one set of people is more philosophic and the other less so.

But that line of reasoning is a trap: no matter what, we’re in a debate situated within religion, and philosophy is a hopelessly unclear concept except for some political notion of tolerance. There’s no explanation about how the same thing can create a violent “us vs. them” mentality and at the same time be thought the bearer of universal peace. And I mean “thing” – religion, at this point in the inquiry, is also hopelessly unclear thing. It seems to be either obedience to or love of standards and laws or the mantic interpretation of such laws, the spirit of the law (“what is there but to do justice and walk humbly with one’s God”). To say there’s a bit of a tension regarding what constitutes religion would be a gross understatement.

2. So let’s try the inquiry again and shift some categories around. Forget religion for a second. It is clear people have to fight and die to protect a given society and that they have to believe what they fight and die for is important. Very well. To some degree, we can talk about religious/political phenomena as an unleashing or cultivation of willpower. It’s important, maybe more important than having citizens that are tolerant and peaceable. As wonderful as they can be, the question of survival is pressing, perhaps most pressing when unseen.

None of this gives us the “true form” of revelation. What it does, though, is link the public form with utility for society, as we see in the above paragraph. That leaves the question of what exactly is going on with those who might be considered more passive about religion. Certainly it is the case some zealots will see weakness where others see strength. Can we say those who are more peaceable are just protecting their own interest? That the only thing at play is a private notion of utility?

Maybe, but that’s horribly cynical and unfair to those who are not zealots. And we just defended zealots – for all their savagery, we admit, they might be willing to sacrifice for a common good. So what exactly is the defense of those who are a bit quieter about their faith? That they are the true adherents, citizens of another world?

It isn’t clear what exactly their virtue is in religious terms, even after the centrality of the Beatitudes. We see their humaneness, but religion at times marks that as more or less valuable. Their trueness to the faith is seen by God and God alone. And as noted above, we can’t really call them “philosophic.” They don’t see themselves that way, and we can’t assume they are open to the radical sort of questioning that constitutes a love of wisdom (and is, to be fair, antagonistic to love of humanity at times).

3. Whatever the “true form” of revelation is, it has to do with the private more than the public. The political things and common opinions are worked through, in a sense, to see what is left. There are two things on my mind – I’m sure, if you press the issue, that they do not add up – as I talk about this. First, the famous “big letters/small letters” thing from the Republic. If you looked for justice in the city, wouldn’t it be written on it in big letters? And wouldn’t what is written on it be the exact same thing, writ small, on our souls? It sounds preposterous, but Socrates is more right than one thinks. What he’s pointing to is that the city is knowable morally. When we say “all men are created equal,” we posit a basis for justice that has literally dictated American history. To a large degree, it has dictated our private responses to things and even how we feel. Of course, the small problem exists that it is not clear anything like “all men are created equal” is written on any of our souls. The problem of what justice is, what the best life is, is still outstanding no matter how knowable the city (or where we live) is. The main thing to be gained from the metaphor is that the public things have an indirect value in illuminating the private.

But. There’s always one of these, and this one is way more complicated to discuss. I was reading Christopher Bruell’s thoughtful and provocative essay on Xenophon in the History of Political Philosophy (can you tell I recommend it?). Now that I’ve been working on Xenophon for years, I have notes on each sentence of it – he’s made me think that much more about it all. One of the best things the essay does is show how Socrates shows up directly and indirectly in Xenophon’s corpus, including the works that are non-Socratic. This is not insignificant; in the Cyropaedia, at least one teacher is mentioned who sounds like Socrates (and is put to death for pulling a kid away from his father). The tyrant Croesus is mentioned as one who challenged the truth of Apollo’s prophecy, incurring his wrath. The references in other works go beyond a joking touch. The Hellenica is where we see Socrates stand for the law against mob anger. We know what price he paid for that. When one considers that Xenophon himself retired from public life to sit and write, thinking through yet again what things in his life meant, it is incredible Socrates shows up so much. My own thought is that pagan philosophy did conceive of another world, but it was much less grand than what revealed religion proposes. Socrates and the problems he posed live in thought, live in the questions of how one is living one’s life, for what end, what is achievable. For all these questions, you need all the knowledge in the world and none at all. You need this world, experience, to speak. That requires the life of the mind, and to a much lesser degree, philosophic literature. Then there is the claim that there is a book which has all the answers, period. I don’t want to be uncharitable, though, or unfair. The English Thomist Richard Hooker saw a degrading of Scripture in using it to validate or invalidate every trivial decision. The perfection of Scripture was relative to its supernatural purpose. I don’t know that I’d say Richard Hooker was a philosopher, but he was a decent human being, and I’d certainly like that much.

References

Bruell, Christopher. “Xenophon” in History of Political Philosophy, 3rd Edition. ed. Strauss/Cropsey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. 90-114.

Forrester, Duncan. “Richard Hooker” in History of Political Philosophy, 3rd Edition. ed. Strauss/Cropsey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. 361.

Experience and Knowledge – Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete, p. 197

philosophy

The passage below, from Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete p. 197, is something I’ve been thinking about the last week or so. It needs quite a bit of context. Benardete talks about how he met a mathematician at a party who thought mathematics was his professional life, but wasn’t feeling particularly fulfilled by it. So the mathematician went ahead and became this incredible expert in Japanese music.

The questions that arise are of identity, being and education. Regarding the last, is there something about the character of knowing that has changed from ancient philosophy to modern philosophy? I like to say that the whole issue of Socrates is this: in dying, he was as good as his word. There’s something about knowledge which necessitates self-knowledge and perhaps vice versa. It informs the being one is, the nature one has. I think that’s the context you need for the passage below. Descartes, of course, is an example of “modern” philosophy:

Seth [Benardete]: This is connected, I think, with the whole issue of experience and teaching.

Michael [Davis]: How do you mean?

Seth: The character of teaching, à la Descartes, is to speed up the process of understanding or to give the impression that you can speed it up.

Robert [Berman]: You can leapfrog.

Seth: Somebody forms himself on the basis of the life he has lived, then he transmits it. But the life is not transmitted, only the rubrics, not grounded -

Robert: – in the experience that gave way to them to begin with.

Seth: Right.

Rather than knowing, the passage is concerned with teaching. Teaching leads back to a contention about knowledge. “The process of understanding” can be sped up or be made to look like it can be sped up. The problem with the fantastic promise of method is that experience seems to be essential to our knowledge. All of us know that to memorize a fact for school feels arbitrary and forced until one sees that fact play out on the news or in the real world. And that’s knowledge as didactic.

If we start talking about the character of understanding as it relates to discovering for oneself, then things get much weirder. Benardete speaks of somebody forming himself “on the basis of the life he has lived.” This is moral knowledge resulting in guidelines, advice, propositions. One can challenge whether this is knowledge strictly. I think what’s interesting is hearing from people who have made scientific discoveries and had “eureka” moments. I can’t imagine there is some strict reason/passion separation at work, where the achievement of knowledge is completely separable from the feelings one has about it or a number of other propositions one has related to the way one thinks. To sit and solve a problem of some magnitude requires clearing up one’s own thought, one’s own mental cobwebs, and discovering how best to think for oneself.

That “how best to think,” along with the certainty of scientific knowledge, has led some to think that mind is universal, so much so it is beyond mankind, beyond all mere physical phenomena. I’m not so sure: I’m (obviously) thinking more that real discovery is going to involve some degree of self-discovery. That doesn’t mean there’s some optimal way to think or not think, but rather indicates that some sort of striving is essential to knowledge, a striving that isn’t quite brute calculation. A body of knowledge, on this thought, only makes sense if there are knowers.

This all might seem obvious, but any time one wants to propose something about how we know or who we are there are bound to be complications. Later in the discussion Benardete is asked how he is so sure the issue is experience. Benardete relates an anecdote about Leo Strauss, how Strauss met a Polish woman and remarked how she had a depth American women her age didn’t have. For a second, I thought the issue was “sure, someone who watched their country and the people around them get obliterated twice by the Germans and Russians in a matter of few years would display a certain depth.” But it may be possible to go through the horrors of war, the trauma of living under bad or failed ideologies, see one’s tradition and identity challenged to the point of being annihilated and learn absolutely nothing.

The issue is experience because having experience isn’t the be all-and-end all for knowledge. The question is closer to how you want your experience to be a guide, a thing of value. Even that isn’t putting it quite right, because I remember being preached to recently by this 18 year old who had found God who I really wanted to shut up. The Polish woman, assuming she’s been through a lot, probably displayed a moral maturity by being less concerned with acquisition and achievement and more concerned with something else. I’m tempted to say that is something like “how things are valuable,” but I’m not sure. I will say this: a passage from Heidegger’s “What is Metaphysics?” has stayed with me, the one where he speaks of great anxiety and the beings around us receding as a consequence. I’m not sold on the metaphor (I don’t know that it is a metaphor, but that’s another story), but I wonder about having almost nothing left. If one were lucky, would she be guessing at the value of the smallest things in slow, deliberate ways to see if the world made a lick of sense?

References

Benardete, Seth. Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete. ed. Ronna Burger. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002.

Notes on a Lecture of Susan D. Collins – “E Pluribus Unum: Citizens, Friends, and Free Thinkers in the Ancient City”

aristotle, philosophy, politics

These are my notes; feedback appreciated, I did what I could to be clear. You can watch the original lecture here. Susan Collins teaches at the University of Houston and is the co-author of a translation of Aristotle’s Ethics. If you’re interested, an interview with her.

Can ancient thought guide current political practice? There are several complications at the start of the inquiry. For example, illiberal aspects of the past: slavery was commonplace in Classical Greece and Rome. Further, our world is so, so different that it is hard to see how two thousand year old theories could be applicable. The use of an iphone can invalidate a restaurant review made 5 minutes earlier. Doesn’t politics require some sense of stability? A continual flux of information and opinion seems overwhelming for concepts made for a world where people would lose all hope in the midst of battle because of an eclipse.

So why not leave the ancient city behind? Well, it emphasizes aspects of political life we tend to neglect. Unity is one of those. Modern democracy nowadays tends to place greater emphasis on a libertine freedom centered around the individual. There are good reasons for this, of course, but older thought may prove useful for finding a way to unity and pride in that unity which involves respect for the rights of all. Aristotle talks about a city working together for an end, for the sake of the good. Our political life doesn’t really allow for reflection on what it means to live well. Rather, it seems to emphasize simply living.

The contrast brings us to the more specific concerns of the ancient city. Family looms large in the Republic, though it is treated somewhat ironically there. Laws are a more fundamental concern for ancient thought generally, as they point to the development of virtues which shape citizens a particular way. The city has a “wholeness and rootedness” that takes man’s sociability seriously; not all law points to mechanism or artifice, creating incentives or disincentives for behavior. However, an overemphasis on law or family can make conventionality in the guise of tradition seem like it only speaks to the higher aspects of humanity. It might become hard to guard against a certain nostalgia for generations past.

Still, there are more “realistic” dimensions of the ancient city, ones that remind of modern concerns such as security. The prime example: the ancient city takes conflict seriously. Conflict is not just one city going to war with different cities, but the problem of many seeking the good within the city itself. Various associations form within the city, i.e. families, where people seek the good for themselves and their allies. Aristotle speaks of an “equal exchange of evils” where various associations and communities composing the city continually demonstrate the harshness of civic life. Hierarchy, force exerted from the more authoritative part of the city, is not just a basic necessity but perhaps even integral to whatever freedom is enjoyed in everyday life.

These more realistic dimensions, when considered in the context of what seem to be idealistic notions, raise fundamental questions. What does it mean to live in common? To have a shared life? What could any of this have to do with force?

It helps to treat ancient political philosophy as somewhat practical, as continuous with problems raised in ancient history that Plato and Aristotle were very familiar with. Herodotus gives us story after story about different peoples with different customs. His “inquiry” – the word we translate as history – focuses on them as they are all about to be conquered by the Persians. It seems some notion of Greek freedom and prudence is opposed to this imperialism. Thucydides, however, starts from the problem of Greek empire. People are far less important in his account than the destruction of war and fatal acts.

Thus, we can see flux and conflict as an “intellectual frame” for the ancient city. For example, consider the first book of the Republic: religion, foreigners, sophists, tyranny and force are all brought up to open a book that will give us an ideal city of sorts. The dialogue Charmides has Socrates back from service at the siege at Potidea, dealing with half-baked notions of philosophy from Critias and Charmides, who are associates of his and wannabe tyrants. Aristotle tells us in the Politics that without law and justice, man becomes the worst of the animals. He must have virtue.

Now Aristotle gives us a distinctively political basis for virtue. He lays heavy emphasis on reciprocity, as evidenced by the discussion of “the equal exchange of evils” above and the famous “ruling and being ruled in turn” of the opening of the Politics. But he also talks about the need to exchange goods for community, the fullness and full implications of “a common way of life.”

This brings us to an “ancient realism,” where themes of flux and force and also community reside. One has to wonder about what true community could be in the face of so much conflict. The “architectonic power” of ancient community sees freedom as stemming from authority. The “closed” society, local and strictly moral as opposed to universal and tolerant, is where law shapes mores and gives a way of life. Law requires reverence and piety.

But the establishment of a pious authority obviously does not make anyone free on its own. Ancient realism wonders how the city encompasses community, family, friends; the question of nature, however, emerges as one moves back to the individual and asks about the ends of the city. A diversity of political communities are comprehended by law. In the city, more natural communities are united by law; friendship matters at least as much as having an armed camp. Aristotle at times speaks of philosophy in the same breath as gambling and exercise. It seems like as one gets a friendlier, better city united by law, philosophy is more susceptible to being attacked by it. Why does anyone need knowledge?

Philosophy doesn’t despair. The activity of philosophy is what enabled the more natural basis for the city to be brought forth. The freedom that is philosophy stays somewhat hidden, but is ever present. As long as people can see conflict and disagreement as natural and work with it politically, they can see the higher possibility philosophy represents – that something positive or meaningful about our nature might be understood.

Briefly Noted: Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism”

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Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism” (in Interpretation Vol. 26 No. 3 Spring 1999)

1. At first, the value of Strauss’ lecture seems to be that of a historical document. It is delivered in 1941 shortly after the fall of France and before it is clear the U.S. will enter war. Strauss, a German Jew, asserts that virtually no one in Germany liked the Weimar Republic; it was considered merely an Anglo-French imposition. He wonders to what degree one can consider the German youth that embraced Nazism nihilistic.

This last question creates an historical and theoretical discussion. The German youth come close to nihilism; they have a nihilism of a sort. To say they have no moral purpose is to ignore the will to sacrifice inherent in their militarism. Where they are nihilistic – they are certainly at a point which can be termed evil – is in their rejection of Enlightenment. They do think reason the enemy, as Western democracy and communism both came from Enlightenment thought. Their arguments are almost exclusively in terms of history: i.e., if you say a “natural law” exists which means their desire for self-preservation has reasonable bounds, they might argue that “natural law” was followed and therefore comprehended by early modern notions of the “law of nature.” This kind of thinking makes the use of reason itself a historical development. For them, there is a peculiarly German way that is neither Western democracy or communism. Heidegger speaks of it in “Introduction to Metaphysics” when he talks about Germany being between the West and Russia. Spengler talks about a “Faustic” science, asserting that there can be nationalist science.

That German way involves some all-too-powerful notions that concern morality. So much for concern with morality: in a way that casual observers  of hypocrisy can’t at all see, a more rigorous thinker must confront its leading to the most evil acts. In Germany’s case, the following seems to have happened. Their militarism wasn’t simply aggression. Cities go to war to preserve a way of life, to preserve their identity and virtue. Morality depends on what is more “closed” than “open.” Complete universality and tolerance must of necessity render morality obsolete. Western democracy certainly has pretensions to that universality and tolerance. Perhaps worse in their mindset is communism. Not that class and inequality aren’t problems, but full equality is not a solution as much as the end of history. Think of the dumbest, crudest person one knows satisfying all his base desires and that alone being the goal of society. There is no way to reprimand him or call him to something higher.

I do think Strauss’ discussion in this lecture needs to be supplemented with his later essay, the Preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. Independent of its theoretical themes, i.e. whether Spinoza’s hope that a secular, enlightened Europe could be more peaceful and embrace Jews fully, the essay does an excellent job demonstrating how much hatred Germany had for the Jews over its history. It is hard to believe that any idea could have stopped that much hate. In “Daybreak,” Nietzsche hoped for the day all anti-Semites would be shot. For our purposes, the Preface helps further a convincing picture of pre-WWII Germany: a country with a lot of military power and aggression, humiliated, only able to “unite” on what it hates.

2. That’s the historical discussion, as far as I’m concerned. You probably think it is quite theoretical, but Strauss turns to what could have moderated or educated the young Germans who turned to Nazism. That’s where things get really, really interesting.

Strauss cites Churchill’s rhetoric, particularly the “Their Finest Hour” speech, as perhaps being able to save Germany from choosing Hitler. Trouble is, Churchill is British and this is well after the outbreak of war. The peculiar thing about Churchill’s speech is that it is delivered after the fall of France, after England was lucky to salvage its forces from the fighting there. In other words, Strauss is pointing to Churchill’s magnanimous, noble rhetoric as instructive as how one deals with defeat as a part of life. (For later: one of the amazing things about Churchill in this speech is how he levels with the UK about how many troops they have and how the fighting will go. Our politicians, by contrast, can’t even talk to us about the budget without fudging numbers. We are in dire need of statesmen.)

Strauss does not really dwell on the “noble.” Instead, he continues in the latter half of his lecture from a thread left hanging earlier. He had alluded to how the youth of Germany were only educated in history and progress and did not have more traditional, classical teachers who could work with the ambitious and potentially unscrupulous. But later, Strauss spends a lot of time talking about how while the Nazis may have a culture, they certainly do not have civilization. Civilization involves some respect for reason, not just an aesthetic pride. Not the fine arts, not creation or production, but the idea of discovery unites science and morals and puts them on a higher level. This is not to say there is a natural law. It is more to say that reason functions to work to the truly universal, emphasis on “work” and “truly.” There are trade-offs and the twin pillars of Western thought – Jerusalem and Athens – certainly collide and contradict each other, when not having some contradictory elements within themselves.

One might think Strauss’ moral rhetoric excellent, but wonder how it is theoretical. I actually think the basis for an investigation of nobility is being put forth. The trick is to see that Churchill’s rhetoric works for reasons a bit too close to the pride animating the Nazis. The real difference is that Churchill’s rhetoric has, as an end, grace and strength in defeat. Still, it is prone to some utterly inhuman perversions, such as the firebombing of Dresden or this crap that thankfully did not see the light of day during the war. I wonder about defeat – a limit on man, a lack of success – not merely as a moral guide but as the basis of anything theoretical. Socrates’ knowledge of ignorance was just that. Strauss ends his essay with a line from the Aeneid justifying imperium: “to spare the vanquished and crush the arrogant.” One might wonder about self-construction as a species, where mercy is extended by those aspiring to rule in what is hopefully a moment of self-recognition.

Bioshock 2: Libertarianism, Transhumanism and the Will to Believe

philosophy, politics, , ,

Spoilers galore ahead

1. I finished Bioshock 2 last night. While I wasn’t a huge fan of the opening – mind control makes you shoot yourself in the head 30 seconds into the game, then you resurrect 10 years later – the idea of Rapture (the city you explore) is one of the best premises I’ve come across in a long while.

Some background, familiar to those of you who’ve played the first Bioshock. Rapture is an underwater city created in the 50′s by ultra rich Ayn Rand fanatics who want to live entirely independent of government. They get their wish and for a little while things go smoothly to a degree. There’s all the capitalism one could want and some issues with class and indoctrination, but nothing fatal.

Then people find a sea slug that when mixed with their blood gives them super powers. The rich quickly become angels and demons of a sort and the poor are relegated to merely human status. The problems don’t just stem from the scarcity of superpower blood additive; the more of the substance one has, the more powerful one can theoretically be. This leads to people pretty much eating each other. A former gangster, in the name of getting more additive for the people, finds a way to mass produce the stuff and stages a rebellion against the city’s founder. Things get bloody quickly and the whole city becomes an insanity-filled ruin. The substance isn’t perfect and deforms people over time. It certainly does not promise immortality just yet.

As a critique of libertarianism and Objectivism, Bioshock’s plot is powerful. I’m really amazed gamers can play this and not have doubts about some of the views popular in the gaming community. I remember attending libertarian events. There was always ranting about how bad government was and almost no thought about how low some individuals we knew were actually going. The assumption was once the evil government was removed, whatever is left is good. Bioshock just explodes that: power is real and people want it. Take away restraints and those who have advantages will abuse them for any number of reasons. When there’s no formal order, everyone can become more fearful and paranoid. For all its problems, law protects us from each other.

2. The setup of a fallen Rapture is not without nuance. Bioshock 2 presents the educational amusement park dominated by Rapture’s founder, Andrew Ryan. The voice of Ryan and several animatronic Ryans preach the evils of the surface to children in exhibit after exhibit. Government takes away from honest, hardworking farmers, stifles scientific progress, prevents artistic free expression. As you explore the area, Ryan Amusements, you encounter the audio diaries of several of the major characters. One of the gentlemen who wanted to create the park wanted a genuine amusement park, a place where children could have fun. His vision seems to have been completely appropriated. Ryan himself, though, expresses doubts about the mode of education involved. He concedes grudgingly that the approach of Ryan Amusements as a whole works. The larger tension of how freedom and education reconcile is driving the darker emotions on display. Aristotle does not think children or animals have rational choice. If Aristotle is even close to being right, the consequences for an immediately practicable political ideology are huge, and not just for the children being indoctrinated. The doctrine itself is in a way pretending that freedom is a one-size-fits-all proposition.

Bioshock 2 concerns Sofia Lamb, a psychiatrist with a literally cult following. Ryan and the former gangster are dead following the first game, and Rapture was a dystopia then. Now her cult “runs” what’s left of an already that much more wrecked Rapture, with drug addict super powered post-humans everywhere. She once accused Ryan of unleashing the egoism of everyone in the city. Given where one finds that accusation, it might be thought a comment on Ryan creating a cult of personality. Ryan saw her cult as a collectivist menace. Both run cults of personality but seem willing to accept that irony. Ryan thinks of what he’s achieved as liberty. A little egoism never hurt anyone, as long as they’re free.

With Lamb, the problem runs deeper. She sees self-awareness as pain and greed. Utopian individuals are possible, but they need to be completely disinterested. Her cult of personality is a stepping stone to a greater good. She’s using it to collect more of the superpower substance for her daughter. Her daughter will have near infinite mental resources and powers. She can be the first citizen of a true utopia. It’s weird: in game, Lamb comes off as shrill, menacing and insane. Writing out what she’s after – hey, if we get rid of self-interest, aren’t these superpowers usable? – makes her project look a lot more feasible and interesting. Give the superpowerful family ties and selflessness: that’s not just a perfect society, but an angelic realm, no?

3. Why this can’t work is tricky. The conventional narrative, given by the game: the rarity of the superpowered substance required a new race specifically devoted to having the sea slug in them, producing and storing the stuff in their bodies, collecting it from corpses lying around the city. This was the Little Sisters: genetically modified to have it pump through their veins and lacking any superpower besides regeneration, as well as mentally conditioned to see the world as roses no matter how bleak it is. “Little Sisters” are loyal to a fault to “Big Daddies,” behemoths designed to defend them to the death while they harvest/produce/store.

Lamb’s daughter for a complex set of reasons was turned into a Little Sister. This turned out to be a blessing for her mother’s plan, as it meant she could process a large amount of the substance without becoming deformed or insane. But it also meant that she became attached to a “Big Daddy” – you, the player in Bioshock 2 – and since she has some issues with Mom, is trying to get you to rescue her.

The larger issue is “What is family?” and Bioshock 2 doesn’t disappoint. You, as a Daddy, are almost entirely a construct of your own daughter. Lamb’s make-a-family project has a lot of validity to it – again, this is very hard to see while playing – and it looks like the daughter picked that much up from Mom. Your daughter resurrects you using the system set up to empower her. The choices you make as a player are prompts conditioned by the fact you have to attempt a rescue and, in it, learn her history.

It’s a very strange circumstance: a parent almost entirely created by a child, one who has to learn a child just to act himself. Even stranger is the outcome, where the daughter learns from how you act. Who she grows up to be is completely dependent on what you do in game. What is the difference between “almost entirely” (your daughter’s construction) and “entirely?” (her moral formation)

4. If I knew the answer to that, I’d be a lot richer. Suffice to say the question on my mind is how the libertarian framework created the collectivist, religious one. It would be easy to limit that inquiry to “conditions:” the failure of libertarianism on a practical level created the need for something more egalitarian. The story of Rapture allows for that explanation. I don’t think it’s good enough.

It’s not good enough because people’s attachment to what looks like order in game is too convincing. In the midst of death and destruction and a complete lack of anything like civility, people are that much more in awe of someone with a title or some kind of power. Again, I don’t think that’s just “hey, when you’ve got no power, you make the person who does a god,” although that’s sort of true. Nor is it nostalgia from memories of a time things were more ordered, although that might be true.

Something about self-awareness leads to a deeper consideration, but it isn’t clear why. Lamb and Ryan and everyone else in Rapture are right to emphasize the utility of reason. Who cares if you know more about yourself through a book? What’s more important is that knowledge can benefit all or be used to increase your pleasure or pride. Yet the daughter wants self-awareness above all and her mother thinks she is a monster for this.

I can’t tell you what freedom is, but I can see what hesitation is. Independent of any moral concerns, hesitation – reason as restraint – seems to be the flip side of reason as utility. Self-awareness may be nothing more than pain and greed ultimately. But we like to think that it is about our sitting in judgment of ourselves, having some control over who we are. Maybe that’s the real reason why a cult with no pretense to anything divine, only an earthly hope, takes over in Rapture. Only Lamb really believes in a selfless order. All those in awe of her might respect the fact she has the distance to think about things and put them together for herself, to form something appropriate.

Michel Serres: “I quite like my granddaughter’s recent remark: why did that stupid Robinson forget his mobile phone?”

blogging, philosophy

“I’ve known two worlds: that of today in which, near and next to everyone, everyone communicates with everything and everyone, and the other, the preceding one, in which a meticulous cutting up of islets would toss our detached lives about amid a space of scattered tatters. I quite like my granddaughter’s recent remark: why did that stupid Robinson forget his mobile phone?”

- Michel Serres, Biogea 15 (translation Randolph Burks)

I’m not sure what to tell Serres – if there is such a distinction between now and then, it seems very superficial to me. I don’t want to dismiss the possibility that “then” there were strong families and other associations and institutions which may have been closed but helpful in their own way. But Serres doesn’t directly allow for this argument, the argument which might mark a real difference between today and yesterday (i.e. we traded some kind of open-mindedness and choice for a weakening of traditional bonds). He emphasizes a crisis of the past affecting everyone individually: some kind of relentless, surgical flood would throw people hither and thither (“meticulous cutting up of islets would toss our detached lives”). If I want to build a more historical narrative out of this, I have to say people built associations as a response to that more fundamental problem.

That characterization might work, but it involves so much detail that it feels like we’re far away from where we have to be. We have to explicitly talk about the value of communication. The central issue is the quality of communication. To a lesser degree, consistency. Serres’ brief account only seems to focus on consistency, at best. It isn’t clear why or how we communicate with everything and everyone. Before, it seems we were just tossed around and there wasn’t much consistency.

My own thought is we’re closer to the past than the past would like us to think. I can call my parents out on some of their exaggerated hardships – the stories they were telling before have changed slightly nowadays. There’s a lot of talking and messaging online, but I’d be hard pressed to tell you I’ve uncovered a plethora of people other ages couldn’t have possibly known who are now my best friends. Rather, the people who have something to contribute and want to stay in touch make use of the technology. They say hi and we talk about things important to each other. Many other people have figured out that being an island is fun. I think the Internet especially is a haven for the passive-aggressive. Serres, strangely enough, has the right metaphor. It’s just not a narrative for then vs. now.

A Reputation for Justice: Plutarch, “Life of Aristides”

philosophy, politics,

1. Aristides was an Athenian politician renowned for his justice during the Persian Wars. His main rival was Themistocles, who saved the people of Athens as the city burned. Themistocles was successful working in the name of expedience; his swift rebuilding of Athens’ walls set the stage for Athens’ imperial rise. What did Aristides achieve?

Immediately after telling us Aristides’ name, Plutarch inquires into his wealth. It is shocking how quickly the question emerges of how much money a man who might be the most just politician in history had. Even more interesting are names dropped during the discussion. A certain historian, whom Plutarch disagrees with, thought Aristides wealthy as well as Socrates. Plutarch refutes what is adduced regarding Aristides’ wealth; while doing this, he casually mentions that Plato, the philosopher, put on a magnificent show of dithyrambic singers with money given by a tyrant. An extremely convoluted sentence that has something to do with honor and friendship and base intentions apparently makes Plato’s deed fine.

Something I take for granted based on a few passages of Xenophon: Socrates’ wealth was the beings. There is a way you can say the philosopher is wealthy. Still, “beings” and “poetic displays” are a far cry from justice, and Plutarch’s repeated mentions of Socrates force us to reconstruct the implicit relation between philosopher and politician. They are not simply interchangeable, despite some strong parallels in the narrative.

And those parallels have a limit. Themistocles was not just a political rival of Aristides: both men yearned early on for the same lover. Socratic erotics in Xenophon do include a moment where Socrates tells Xenophon himself to stay away from someone he is thinking of hitting on (Memorabilia I.3). However, it is difficult to think of Socrates as a rival lover. If he wants someone, it seems like he simply wouldn’t compete, or would put himself in a situation where he would be the only option. I think Alcibiades’ testimony about Socrates’ playing hard-to-get at the end of Plato’s Symposium definitely testifies to the latter. The former – simply not competing – is not traceable to the dignity of philosophy, but rather its lack of dignity. We recognize something very utilitarian in what we might see as an obsessive, perverse, inhuman attachment to knowledge.

2. The limit on Aristides, for a time, was Themistocles. Themistocles was a man of the people, a genuinely democratic man. Plutarch’s words about him remind me of something vaguely Tocquevillian: “[Themistocles was] ready, adventurous, and subtle, engaging readily and eagerly in every thing.” I have a lot of trouble thinking of those in a democracy as “ready, adventurous, and subtle.” It took my area in Jersey forever to discover Asian food which wasn’t cheap Chinese existed. Even in Tocqueville, the nobility of democracy is hard to see. Tocqueville opens Democracy in America with the thought that equality of conditions is the most striking and important fact about America.

Aristides himself was of the aristocratic party. He was a good aristocrat, refusing to get involved in schemes whereby his fellow partisans could be easily enriched at public expense. Themistocles was notorious for dipping into the treasury and openly bragged about being able to favors for his friends. It may seem strange to us that democracy and populism so quickly grasp for insider status and privilege. But no one said equality necessarily accompanied any perception of a majority’s right.

3. Aristides’ justice made him an extremely effective commander, diplomat, check on Themistocles and ruler in his own right. I should not make it seem he played Robin to Themistocles’ Batman. A reputation for justice is most powerful. In the war, he was able to keep the allies united under Spartan command. When the Spartan generals proved to be corrupt, his reputation made Sparta recall their generals in shame. He was able to secure help at key moments from many allies and keep petty fights from breaking apart the army over nothing. He did stand guard over things captured, keeping them secure, and was at one point in charge of assessing how much every Greek city should be taxed for the sake of the war.

He was not imprudent. He showed tactical smarts and did not hold that justice had the final say in all decisions. He moved the allied fund for the war to Athens openly because of expediency. However, expedience did not allow him to sacrifice his sense of shame. Themistocles once told the assembly he had something which was very advantageous he wanted to do, but had to keep it secret. So the assembly told Aristides to hear the proposal and tell them whether it was worth doing. Themistocles told Aristides that he wanted to burn the arsenal of all the Greeks, which they could do as they were all allies and no one would expect such sabotage. Aristides told the assembly that, regarding what Themistocles wanted to do, “nothing would be more advantageous… and nothing more unjust.” The assembly declined the proposal.

The contrast between him and the others of his time is remarkable. Persians he captured intact he left intact. He sent some who were royalty to Themistocles; Themistocles promptly performed a human sacrifice in accordance with some oracle. Plutarch tells us a story of the Plataeans, who willingly ceded their land for the Greeks to fight on. It was a tremendous sacrifice, but when we hear of how the Plataeans perform an elaborate, monied ritual where only the “free” men of Plataea can participate, we realize the sacrifice of most governing is those of others. When one starts reading into Plutarch’s narrative conflicts between oligarchs, aristocrats and democrats, one realizes that these people are not simply grappling with each other out of pettiness. Nobility is hard to realize when one’s very civilization is at stake, when one’s own fellow Greeks can ally with Persia (as the Thebans did) or factions can accuse you of anything.

4. Aristides’ sacrifices were his own. Thrown into exile at least twice, the second time because of vicious accusations that turned his own reputation for justice and public service against him, he died penniless and away from Athens. Plutarch’s last thoughts on Aristides focus on his descendants, including a granddaughter who, also poor, may have lived with Socrates. A number of women are listed at the end of the narrative, all penniless and supported by the state for the service rendered by their ancestor.

It would be easy to say justice is womanliness or cowardice, a refusal to act or be better. Women are absent from much of Plutarch’s narrative. They only emerge at the end, in a most non-erotic context (save the Socrates story). The question is that of generation. Justice didn’t produce anything for Aristides himself. But it gave the city a chance to preserve something that might blossom, or be a blossoming itself. The city doesn’t know what it is doing in giving Aristides’ descendants money; it is honoring deeds done in a remote past. It is hard to say it is acting ignobly. In fact, what it is doing is the opposite of exiling/ostracizing others – it is preparing the ground for its true greatness, a greatness it probably will not appreciate.