Appetitive: A Rant on Editions and Revisions

I thought there were supposed to be laws against false advertising. I was given a book I really wanted for the holidays, Nicole Loraux's The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, so you might wonder why I am grumbling. As it turns out, this is an abridged version, but no where on the outside of the volume does it account for this fact.

It was not until I began reading Loraux's book that I realized the problem. The preface to the second edition refers to it in the early paragraphs as "abridged" and as "a shorter version. then, but not a rewritten version" (Loraux 15). The back of the book contradicts her statement, claiming that "this new edition of The Invention of Athens includes Loraux's significant revisions undertaken in 1993 to render this groundbreaking work accessible to nonspecialists." "Significant revisions" vs. "not a rewritten version" seems contradictory to me. Furthermore, the titles are exactly the same:The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City vs. The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City. The first one in that series is the new 2006 edition with the "revisions," i.e. cutting out a lot of stuff that might be really useful to me, and the second is the old 1986 edition.

In my opinion, if it's abridged, call it abridged. If you think it will sell less copies than do not abridge it in the first place!!!

The abridged version--2006 (539 pages).

As a note: I love the book. There is no reason to suppose it was abridged. I wish there was a way to hold publishers accountable for problems like this.

Reasoning: Vlastos' Socratic Studies #3

This is the third installment in the chain of blogposts discussing Gregory Vlastos' work Socratic Studies. The third essay in the collection is "Is the 'Socratic Fallacy' Socratic?" I have been studying Plato for five years now, and in depth for about two years, and I never happened across the "Socratic Fallacy." Perhaps this is because I have shied away from the more philosophical approaches to Plato and preferred the classical interpretations. One of the prime examples, apparently, appears in the Lysis (223b) [1] which is one of the Platonic dialogues I have not yet read.

In more general terms, Vlastos phrases the Socratic fallacy as the following: "If you do not know what the F is, you will not know if you are predicating "F" correctly about anything whatever-- you will not know if anything is F" (Vlastos 69). As an example, if you do not know what the beautiful is, then you cannot know whether someone is beautiful (Vlastos 69).

Vlastos provides an argument made by other analytic ancient philosophy scholars (such as Myles Burnyeat) which he refers to as STB. The TB part of the acronym stands for "true belief" and it hinges upon the idea that even if one does not know something, a true belief is sufficient for acting as though they know it. As such, Socrates can maneuver around such a fallacy by saying that even though he doe snot know what a friend is, he has a true belief about it which allows him to call a particular individual a friend (Vlastos 72-73). Arguing based on the work on the different types of knowledge from his previous essay, Vlastos explains that Socrates not only asserts that he has moral knowledge, but also that such moral knowledge is required for being noble and living any semblance of a good life and true beliefs cannot possbily suffice (Vlastos 73).

After a series of arguments, Vlastos proposes an alternative solution: the Socratic fallacy is not Socratic but mathematical. He contends that the influence of mathematics upon Plato's work (notably in the Meno) provides the first introduction of this fallacy and that the fallacy is a perfectly logical statement in geometry (Vlastos 85). He argues that those works which fall directly in the Socratic period, as he calls it, where he believes that Plato represents Socrates' thought, do not include this fallacy while those after the influence of mathematics do include such a fallacy [2].

Here is my proposed answer to Vlastos' problem, as I find his mathematical answer to rely too much on the flawed traditional conceptions of the dates of the dialogues [3]: I think that Socrates' "fallacy" is rather a ploy. To some extent, I believe Plato's Socrates does mean what he says: e.g. if we cannot come to an answer of what friendship is through elenchus we could mistakenly consider someone as a friend who is not. However, what Socrates also points out through this statement is precisely that humans still have the inclinations to use words like justice and friendship despite their lack of a rigorous definition. This is extremely important because it shows that there is some kind of thought about these abstract concepts even if we cannot express it in a coherent manner. This, I believe, is what Plato's character of Socrates is getting at when he forces his interlocutors to speak from what they believe. These beliefs may not be true, but they provide a basis from which Socrates and his interlocutors can hone in on and question their innate sense, something that is often cultural [4]. It is, as Plato and his Socrates imply, the interrogation of these beliefs through elenchus that leads the philosopher to truth.

Endnotes

1. Vlastos discusses the example which appears during a discussion of τό φίλον which Vlastos renders "the dear" (Vlastos 68-69) The concept is a difficult one to translate into English, but it generally expresses love of the type that one would have for friends or family rather than a romantic partner.
2. The fallacy is then accounted for by what Vlastos refers to as "the wildest flight on which Plato's metaphysical imagination ever took off" (Vlastos 79), or the theory of recollection in the Meno.
3. I discuss dates extensively in "Dates in the Platonic Corpus," and more specifically in the first installment with an alternative scheme proposed in the third installment.
4. My supposition is that the implicit notions about justice and understanding partially come from the community, which is why Socrates does not leave Athens except for military service (or at least part of the reason).

Reasoning: More Philosophy Podcasts

I checked into Rogue Classicism today for the first time in a while and discovered some podcasts on the history of philosophy from History of Philosophy without Gaps. According to the blogpost on Rogue Classicism, there were 14 podcasts on the preSocratics, Hippocrates, and the sophists, and now is moving on toward Plato.

I listened to some of the podcast on Parmenides. It is very simple and slightly condescending, but the ideas are clear, which is helpful. I will continue to report as I listen to more.

Reasoning: Hippolytus

Today I read Philip Vellacott's translation of Hippolytus. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Philip Vellacott is an odd scholar. I was introduced to his work when I was assigned his essay "Has the Good Prevailed?" (JSTOR) in my Agamemnon class. He has an unusual take on the ending of the Eumenides that I found intriguing (although I do not quite agree with it) and I became interested in his work. While Cerinthus was in New York, he bought a beautiful copy for me that he found at the Strand.

Hippolytus is the story of Hippolytus, Phaedra, and Theseus. Phaedra falls in love with her son-in-law, Hippolytus. Hippolytus spurns all human love and devotes himself entirely to Artemis. While Theseus is away, Phaedra begins to look sickly and worry her nurse. The nurse eventually discovers Phaedra's secret and tells Hippolytus who is very angry. The nurse makes Hippolytus promise not to tell anyone what he has heard. Phaedra hangs herself, claiming in her suicide note that Hippolytus raped her. Theseus, angry, sends Hippolytus into exile and curses him in Poseidon's name. Hippolytus, a man of moral standing, cannot correct the record because it would break his promise to the nurse, and dies in his chariot as he leaves. Only then does Artemis come down to reveal the truth to Theseus.

Although I enjoyed reading this translation of the play, I found that it lacked the compelling psychological drama of Μήδεια or the theatrical insanity of the Βάκχαι. The conflict seemed less real; instead of a conflict about human morals, religious values, or institutions depicted in Euripides' usual complex manner, the story forced a very black-and-white outlook on piety and moral value of truth. I look forward to reading some interesting scholarly criticism on the play.

Reasoning: The Fragility of Goodness

I must take a break for this week from my continuing review of Gregory Vlastos' Socratic Studies, because I on my way up to visit my Alma Mater. When I was interviewing for my current job, an alumnus from my Alma Mater asked me how I could have possibly written my thesis on Plato and tragedy without reading Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness. Remembering this, I switched the copy of Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher for Nussbaum's book. I read the introduction on the first leg of the plane flight. I would have read a lot more, but I was frustrated by the formatting (dratted endnotes!) and am rather tired.

In her introduction, Nussbaum explains that she is departing from the traditionally Kantian-influence approach to understanding the Greek conception of ἀρετή [1]. She claims to use an Aristotilian approach and will spend the book concerned with the conception of ἀρετή in tragedy, Plato, and Aristotle. She starts her discussion with a quotation from Pindar, about a person being a vine. She posits that the quotation implies that the vine must come from noble lineage to be considered good, but also external conditions determine the goodness of the vine. She sees this as an important distinction, but also a set of principles in tension with one another.

I like Nussbaum's book so far, and I will report more as I continue to move through it.

Endnotes

1. ἀρετή means excellence. It is often questionably translated as virtue. Although virtue is a fine word, and may be better in some ways than excellence, virtue has been framed as something distinct from the Greek conception by the Judeo-Christian tradition and many philosophers who claim to be Platonic or Aristotilian, but who use the term under a Judeo-Christian blanket. ἀρετή encompasses all of those attributes of a person required to lead a good life.

Reasoning: Vlastos' Socratic Studies #2

This is the second installment in a chain of blogposts discussing Gregory Vlastos' book Socratic Studies, which is a series of essays on Socratic philosophy and methodology. It discusses the second essay, "Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge".

In this essay, Vlastos moves on from the the general method of Socrates' questioning Socrates' the profession of ignorance. Specifically, Vlastos tackles the problem that Socrates seems to know so much and is wise, but claims he knows nothing. Most scholars think that he is being ironic or deceitful, but some believe him to be telling the truth (Vlastos 39). Vlastos, rather unusually, argues that Socrates is doing both. he explains that there is a difference between "knowledge-c" or knowledge as truth that is absolutely infallible and "knolwedge-e" which is knowledge justified by elenchus. Socrates can then freely disavow knowledge-c while standing behind knowledge-e, which he does on rare occasion (Vlastos 55-56).

The problem that I see with this theory is that, as Vlastos recognises, Socrates uses a whole host of different Greek words that us moderns translate as "knowledge." Vlastos never states whether there is any correlation between knowledges "e" and "c" and particular Greek words. Moreover, he never articulates a reason why if there is no Greek word correlation between these two particular types of knowledge whether there is some overriding factor that causes Socrates to use the word he does, irrespective of meaning, as well as what makes him confident that two different Greek words could both, for example, stand for knowledge-c. On the other hand, the essay opens up the ability for a lengthy study of those Greek words to answer these questions.

Reasoning: Vlastos' Socratic Studies #1

As I mentioned in a previous blogpost, I recently finished reading Gregory Vlastos' Socratic Studies. I will review the work essay-by-essay, because each one brings up a different part about Socratic methodology (as represented by Plato) that I want to address separately.

The first chapter of is entitled "The Socratic Elechus: Method is All." This utilized the most strictly analytic philosophical approach of any of the essays [1]. He begins by refuting the definition of "Dialectic" given "by Rolland Hall in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy" (Vlastos 2). Vlastos explains that elenchus is not the process of eliciting a hypothesis and the cross-examining the person who provided it until there is a contradiction. Rather, "Socratic elenchus is a search for moral truth by question-and-answer adversary argument in which a thesis is debated only if asserted as the answerer's own belief and is regarded as refuted only if its negation is deduced from his own beliefs" (Vlastos 4).

Vlastos believes that there is a great difference between this elenchus and the elenchus of the later versions of Socrates in Plato's works. Like many others before him, Vlastos hypothesizes that this first Socrates is the true historical Socrates that Plato represents, and then Plato in the middle dialogues breaks away to use Socrates to spout Platonic philosophy [2]. As such, Vlastos approaches his project as discovering Socrates' true method of argument.There are two constraints put on any of the interlocutors with which Socrates speaks: a) "to refrain from speechifying" (Vlastos 7) and b) that the answerer must say what he or she believes.

This second constraint is the important one. The reason is that this eliminates the hypothetical premise (Vlastos provides examples on page 8 of Socrates' objections to hypothetical premises), which is something that estranges elenchus from modern methodology.

Vlastos concludes that an internally consistant belief set would contain entirely true beliefs, according to the premise behind Socrates' elentic method. I find the conclusion of the argument to be both reasonable and interesting, although I feel that it probably has no bearing on the actual method of the true Socrates.

Endnotes

1. It was also the first of the essays that I read and the one of which I have the least recollection. As such, my summery might be less than clear. If it is, let me know in comments and I will try to revise it. I also welcome suggestions by anyone who has read the work.
2. I disagree with this general viewpoint of the evolution of the dialogues. In my series of blogposts entitled "On Dates in the Platonic Corpus," I have discussed this at length (although there is more to come). I do not, however, deal significantly with the claim about why I do not believe this is the historical Socrates. This argument I must save for another blogpost.