Serious shortage of Philosopher Kings reported

edited February 2013 in Local discussion
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; ">The Philosophy learning Circle meets every Thursday at 11 am in Hornsey Library, Crouch End, London, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; ">N8 9JA. We usually gather at the If:Book Cafe in the Library, acquire coffee, and then adjourn to a meeting room.</span></span><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; ">The Circle is open to all with an interest in Philosophy; no formal qualifications are required to join (Nor are any qualifications on offer for members). However participants should have an interest in Philosophy (we tend to concentrate on the Western Philosophical Tradition) a willingness to listen to others, respect others opinions, and understand that assertion is not a substitute for reasoned argument. They should also be willing to read the book we are using if we are using one.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; "><br></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; ">The Group is facilitated. The facilitator did take a degree in Philosophy, but a significant number of years ago.</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; "><br></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; ">This term, starting next Thursday we shall be basing our discussions on Plato's "Republic".  This choice was made through discussion in the group, and I think it will be really fun.  An English translation (and yes, we shall "wimp out" and not work in the original Greek) is easily obtainable from most book, shops, or indeed the well known Amazon... but is also available, free, as an etext from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here:</span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; "><br></span></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; "><a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html">http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html</a></span></div><div><br></div>;
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Comments

  • Would love to come along, unfortunately I'm at work at that time :(<br>
  • I always liked the sound of the Republic, until I actually read the poorly-argued torrent of proto-fascist bilge.
  • What ADGS said.<br>
  • edited February 2013
    Philosophy should engage with social change and not be some dry academic claptrap. 
  • edited February 2013
    What was that Keynes' line about politicians who think they are pragmatists really being slaves to a dead economist? 'Dry academic claptrap' and social change aren't mutually exclusive. Anyway, haven't read Plato in years, but what I remember is someone who was at times absurd and often wrong but always interesting. Plus how depressing would it be to only read things you agreed with? Now Aristotle on the other hand ....
  • In notice Kreuzkav has now edited out his list of philosophers that he does approve of.  But Marx is as much a product of the C19th as Plato was of the C5th BCE.  The key to philosophy is to understand it in the context of its time so that you can abstract the core argument from the contextual prejudices and apply it to one's own time.  Remember that Plato and Aristotle were also arguing for social change.<br><br>For instance, I'm an Aristotle man myself, but that doesn't mean that I believe in slavery or consider women to be an intermediate intellectual stage between men and animals.<br>
  • on the other hand, I regularly get outwitted by my cats.
  • Plato was a lunatic, Aristotle was just a formalisation of conventional wisdom which is often not very wise. Less pernicious, less blood-boilingly annoying, but still pretty much the Clarkson of the classical world.
  • Yes, but he was a lunatic who could write.
  • Really? I can't speak to the quality of his Greek, but the through-line when he's arguing eg why punishment does not make men more just is utter nonsense, even if you agree with his conclusion. And that's quite the achievement. 
  • My Greek used to be decent, but it's long gone. From what I remember, though, the Symposium and the Dialogues were surprising and funny and human. Him and Aeschylus are what got me through Part I. Homer, on the other hand, I could never stand and Euripides was far too emotional.
  • edited February 2013
    I agree with you Arkady on philosophers being read in context.  I edited out Marx (before anyone made a comment) and a few others because they are of their time.  I prefer Marx as a cultural analyst.<div><br></div><div>I also agree with Mirandola that sometimes it's good to read someone you disagree with.  Infact, I now disagree with my previous comment that philosophy should just be about social change.  I used to like to read the post-structuralists for a laugh and a bit of intellectual challenge.</div>
  • It's good to read Nozick only to get a sense of the intellectual framework most people who run the world use to make decisions. Almost certainly Dick Cheney's favourite philosopher. But on a cursory read it all seems so reasonable.
  • I certainly agree with the general principle of that - I always like to scan the front pages of the Murdoch rags, not for news, but to see what people are being told, which is informative in quite another way.<div><br></div><div>I have a lot of time for both Aeschylus and Euripides, though the former in particular is abysmally served by a lot of his translators - they go for a sort of cod-Shakespeare that ends up sounding like a bad Thor comic. </div>
  •  ADGS would not be eligible to join the group anyway as one of the rules is that  you<div><br></div><div>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: 18px; ">understand that assertion is not a substitute for reasoned argument."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: 18px; "><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: 18px; ">By all means argue that Plato was false, but give reasons, your own ones arrived at by independent thinking would be good, but you might also wish to consider Crossman's attack on Plato, or, in my view, the better critique by Popper in the "Open Society and its Enemies"</span></div>
  • edited February 2013
    aweeeeeeeeeee
  • Philosophy corner on Friday please.<br>
  • <P>@andy. Hey, I'd have paid a dollar to see Wilt Chamberlain plan. </P> <P>Runs off before anyone realises that's all she knows about Nozick.</P>
  • I mean, that's a really good example of something that looks sensible at first glance but is sort of stupid and insidious.
  • I know nothing about Nozick. In fact I don't think I've ever read/studied any American philosophers. Which seems odd. Anyway, I looked him up and he appears to have had pretty terrifying hair/eyebrows. <br>
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  • But Plato himself was happy to make assertions without evidence. For instance, when he starts on the nature of the gods which, he takes as a given, is perfect. As such, all the legends of what the gods actually did must be false, because they disagree with Plato's own no-reasons-given assertion about the behaviour and nature of the gods. And, being false, those stories must be pernicious - so they should be banned.<div>That's poisonous rot, and it's not even poisonous rot with a firm foundation.</div><div><br></div><div>Besides, I already gave the example of the punishment not making men more just idea as nonsense - do I really need to rehearse that to show why? If so: the purpose of a horse is to run fast (says who?). If you punish it, you make it less able to run fast (depends on the punishment, or riding whips would be a peculiar invention indeed). Similarly, the purpose of a man is to be just (says who?). So if you punish him, you must also make him less able to be just!</div><div>[Slow handclap]<br><div><br></div><div>(Yes, I'm saying Plato when Socrates is supposedly the speaker. But the Socrates of the Republic, with all his confident assertions of what Is Definitely True, seems to have no relation to what little we know of the real Socrates, who was wise because he knew how little he knew, so I prefer not to play along with Plato's dragging his name through the mud)</div></div>
  • Indeed. And when you find an assertion without evidence challenge it. Pointing out where an important thinker like Plato is wrong, is the bread and butter of philosophical discourse. Philosophy is not religion with prophets whose authority is to be respected; it is a discipline with widely acknowledged important figures whose arguments it is accepted are worth grappling with. In fact the errors made by a philosopher may be more important than any positive truths they seem to establish. Hobbes "Leviathan" is read as an important text in political philosophy not because its central theses that to avoid the evils of civil disorder there should be an unchecked autocratic government is widely accepted.....
  • (On the Sartre example many Anglo Saxon Philosophers would be ready to agree with you that all too often it is assertion without supporting argument.)
  • And yes I might well  not let Sartre join the circle; but Simone De Beavoir would probably be welcome.
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