So a former student invited me to give a talk on Plato at the Junior College where he now teaches: The Republic, in an hour and a half. So I’m busy condensing my notes and I’ve got this chunk about craft analogies: ship’s pilots and farmers and shoemakers and all that Platonic palaver. Bah. Shoemaking. Not relevant to today’s modern world (I don’t really know what I was thinking.) Then I went out to catch a cab to go give my talk and – I kid you not – the bottom of my shoe fell off. Well, not quite all the way off. But, like, halfway off.
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Good thing you weren’t using examples about pastry-making or horse training—- who knows what would have happened then.
“The Republic” in a highly readable, squished 61 minutes. http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/plato.htm
That’s what happens when you try to cobble something together in such a slipshod manner.
Not sexy is different from not relevant.
I happen to be married to the great-granddaughter of a Swedish shoemaker, an incredible example of whose work (vintage 1870) we still possess. Shoemaking is my favorite counter-example to the palaver of the Brad DeLongs of this world about how WalMart has enable us prols to survive by buying cheap consumer goods. Unfortunately they’re cheap in both senses of the word, and I doubt most of us are better off. Of course the argument holds for consumer electronics.
End of rant.
I take it as a proof that any cook can run the government.
Can we limit the use of palaver to once per post, comments included?
#7: As long as we can mention palaver without using it.
So we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop…how’d the talk go?
You mean your shoe was neither on, nor exactly off? And yet you can imagine it being fully on?
Of course, there’s always the really short Quentin Tarantino version.
http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/d/r/dryfoo/www/Funny-pages/republic-dogs.html
Oh, it’s always about you, isn’t it, John. When the really “relevant” and “modern” question is: what is it like to be a shoe?
Snark aside, since when is The Republic not relevant to the modern world? It’s the template for the Permanent Republican Majority. As a model for the totalitarian state, it has its principles have informed not only Lenin and Karl Rove, but the Lee family of Singapore and Shintaro Ishihara, governor of Tokyo, a weather-vane for the ruling “Liberal Democratic” Party (I put the “Liberal Democratic” in quotes because the party is neither).
Sorry about the grammatical problem—its should read “state—its principles…”
I don’t know what all the fuss is about: isn’t a common interpretive strain just that which argues that The Republic is a parable of the sole?
As a model for the totalitarian state, it has its principles have informed not only Lenin and Karl Rove, but the Lee family of Singapore and Shintaro Ishihara, governor of Tokyo, a weather-vane for the ruling “Liberal Democratic” Party (I put the “Liberal Democratic” in quotes because the party is neither).
And don’t forget Genghis Kahn, Kahless the Vulcan, and Col. Green!
I don’t know what all the fuss is about: isn’t a common interpretive strain just that which argues that The Republic is a parable of the sole?
I always thought it was parable of the halibut.
You can do the republic in much less than a half hour. You can sum up the whole argument in three words: “Of course, Socrates.”
And don’t forget Genghis Kahn, Kahless the Vulcan, and Col. Green!
Kahless was a Klingon, not a Vulcan. Surak was the Vulcan in that episode, and was one of the good guys, along with Abe Lincoln.
Geez, get it right.
Parable of the harmony between sole and city is good, very good. (Why didn’t I think of that?)
When lecturing on Plato, shouldn’t one wear sandals?
Ben Alpers:
I don’t think Genghis Khan ever tried to present himself as a “philosopher” in any sense of that word. Neither does Karl Rove, for that matter. I think Donald “as we know there are known knowns” Rumsfeld makes a better philosopher-king.
Actually, it’s not about the harmony between the sole and the city, it’s the fact that the ideal city is the sole writ large, so as to better illustrate the ideal structure of the sole. I suppose in that case everything hinges upon what kind of shoe you were wearing such that the appetitive part could separate from the rational and spirited parts.
notjonathon: The ideal polis is a ‘city of words’ in a nonpejorative utopian sense and was therefore never intended as any sort of blueprint for political action.
Mike (#19) is, of course, entirely correct. I’m a failure as a geek.
Nonetheless, I’m pretty sure that the Excalbians considered Genghis Khan the embodiment of a philosophical principle (pace bi @ #22).
Yes, and the Noble Lie is the Guccis really are better shoes.
The Conservative versions of the Republic that I’ve encoutered omit the bit about the forms. Right and wrong, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, are simply what the ruling group says they are.
Jim,
That might be said to fairly capture the view of Thrasymachus (at least with regard to justice, but by implication…) but clearly is not the view of either Socrates and Plato.
erratum: Socrates or Plato
Yep, that’s why I wrote about the Conservative version of the Republic. I don’t understand it that way myself.
On a vulgar-Straussian reading, Thrasymachus can be said to voice the true, esoteric message of the dialogue while the stuff about the forms put out by Socrates is just the middlebrow version of the holy fiction that underlies the state. The error of Thrasymachus lies in not recognizing the need to maintain the illusion of decency. It isn’t enough to dare to be brutal and selfish. You’ve got to dare to be a hypocrite and liar while your at.
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