Monday, 21 November 2016
Sunday, 20 November 2016
Wittgenstein & Socrates' absurd question.
There is a view that Philosophical problems arise only because Language has been misapplied. Some error of syntax or semantics has misled us. But what happens when the confusion is clarified?
As Wittgenstein puts it-
Let us take a much analysed example- 'Socrates' absurd question' which is at the heart of Plato's Symposium-
Here is one scholarly translation- '... is Love such as to be the love of something/someone or nothing/no-one? I am asking not if it is of a [or a particular] mother or father—for absurd would be the question if Love is love of a mother or father—but as if I were asking about the term father, “Is a father the father of someone or not?” You would have told me, I suppose, if you wanted to answer properly, that it is of a son or a daughter that a father is the father, wouldn’t you?'
Young Greek intellectuals relished this sort of argument because, like the gorgeous paradoxes of the nihilist Gorgias, it turned on a fine point of Grammar- a source of ambiguity which a suave interlocutor could exploit so as to, in a charming manner, steer his audience towards a predetermined goal. This ambiguity has to do with the subjective and objective genitive case and has no salience in English. Indeed, English speaking readers might well think Socrates was a fool and his interlocutors idiots on the basis of passages like this.
By contrast, for the Semitic languages, not just the genitive case but also the notion of Fatherhood- as in God, the Father's, consubstantiality with his Son- or Motherhood- as in 'the mother of the Book'- or daughter-hood- as in 'bat kol' the 'daughter of the voice' from Heaven- had a quite different semantic force and range of associations precisely because all genealogy led back to the univocal Godhead.
Socrates' question, as posed by Shelley- a young aristocrat at odds with his wealthy father- is indeed absurd for an English speaker because we feel very strongly that family ties don't define us. By contrast, in the Middle East, it is common to refer to a man as 'Abu' (father of) or a woman as 'Umm' (mother of) their eldest son or daughter.
For the last few centuries, Plato's trajectory in the East has been in the direction of a populist univocity and subaltern illuminationism. In the technocratic West, however, Platonism retains salience only in the Philosophy of Mathematics.
Wittgenstein, however, believed that it was a mistake to think Mathematics could have Philosophical problems. Rather Philosophy's task was to get clear of any difficulty Mathematics was making for itself so as to get a bird's eye view of what was involved without any contradiction actually being resolved.
In the case of Socrates' absurd question- a particular Language game was being played in which, by a verbal trick, or ambiguity of language, something inherently 'multi-dimensional'- viz. Love- was made to substitute for something essentially relational or scalar- e.g. who is the father of who.
A Mathematical treatment of what happens when a 'democratic' Social Choice mechanism treats of a multi dimensional 'policy space' is given by the McKelvey Chaos theorem. Simply put, we can show by purely mathematical means that adding dimensions to a problem means that controlling the agenda- i.e. deciding in what order to pose yes/no questions- can yield any possible outcome.
Another way of arriving at the same insight is to see Semantics as a 'Co-ordination problem'. Clearly we are all better off if we have a means to co-ordinate our actions through Language. Thomas Schelling put forward a notion of 'focal points' which 'naturally' solved the co-ordination problem under conditions of decentralized decision making. David Lewis based his theory of 'Conventions' on Schelling's insight.
Does this means there's some democratic way of getting rid of semantic problems from public discourse? No. One 'focal solution' may be more efficient or computationally less costly than another. Even without any strategic behavior, there would be some uncertainty and debate and confusion because information is costly to process and change takes time.
Factor in, strategic behavior- e.g. 'agenda control'- and there's going to be, not just frictional 'noise' creating a 'signal extraction problem' but also all sorts of 'hysteresis effects' and collectively irrational 'bubbles'- just like in the global financial system when it became 'incentive incompatible'- i.e. when politicians and money managers had perverse incentives.
Fans of Wittgenstein- or a broader philosophical 'linguistic turn', not to mention paranoid 'epistemologies of suspicion' or uncritical 'critical theory'- could pretend that by clarifying language they would be ineluctably led to some liberative insight. 'The civil status of a contradiction' might turn out to refer to some Marxian Crisis or Marcusian Lysis.
Meanwhile, on the Right, some 'neo-conservatives' allegedly believed that the elite could hang on to a clear sighted view of how things really work, and how they must be allowed to work, while writing high falutin' nonsense so as to add noise to signal as part of some soi disant 'Noble Lie'.
Both views were shallow and self serving. A little honest mathematical work- like that of John Muth- supplemented by proper empirical research could easily put paid to the notion that ordinary human beings are prisoners of Language or Culture or Gramscian 'Hegemony' or Butlerian 'Perfomativity' or Bhabha's 'hybridity' or any other such fatuous academic 'availability cascade'.
But why should this be? How can ordinary people be smarter than apple polishing PhD candidates> Well, the fact is we have evolved over tens of thousands of years to use Language strategically- i.e. lie and be lied to- and to be sensitive to the appearance of focal points as solutions to co-ordination games. In the short run, we can be fooled- but within a surprisingly short number of iterations we quickly gravitate to the focal point which would be predicted by the correct theory. 'The dead hand of the past'- or 'hysteresis'- does not dictate or render increasingly chaotic our actions in the Social sphere- provided there is a genuine collective benefit from a 'channelization' of behavior.
In practice, because we have evolved under Knightian Uncertainty, dis-coordination games and the damming up of 'capacitance diversity' also features in the relevant Evolutionary Stable 'regret minimizing' strategy.
Socrates, of course, was not a 'Social Scientist'. Even on his way to the Court Hearing where he would be condemned to death, he wished to practice the intellectual 'midwifery', or method of maieutics, which has immortalized his name.
Thus, in the Theaetetus, he puzzles over how Knowledge might have a canonical definition as 'true judgment with an account'.
The answer is that we know that the underlying co-ordination problem for agents is solvable by agreeing to be bound by 'artificial reason'- i.e. a system of endogenous protocols which may evolve on a fitness landscape but which is not itself revocable by some fact of what appears to be 'natural law' nor by a 'bat kol' or 'voice from Heaven'.
Socrates, on the brink of a fatal judgment, is, however, concerned with ultimate things. He recounts a dream which suggests that there might be an underlying 'alphabet' or (what Descartes, Leibniz et al would call a mathesis universalis or characteristica universalis) corresponding to the elementary particles or principles (stoichea) from which all Reality is built up. The trouble is these stoicheia may not be knowable, or the work of a Gnostic demiurge, so it is either futile or foolish to hope, at this early stage, that 'true judgement' can render a proper 'account' in terms of the 'alphabet of Being' or 'Theory of Everything'.
Still, one can have as many disparate ' artificial reason Dialogics' as one likes solving different types of problems. When abstract Mathematics advances enough, it can re-unite such Dialogics on the basis of greater generality. Interestingly, when this is done Platonism (as opposed to Socratic or Stoic doubt) does not disappear, rather it re-emerges in a useful way but only because a genuine Mathematical advance hangs in the balance. By contrast, Wittgenstein's own attempt at founding his project on 'atomic propositions' came a cropper. It is not clear that his later notion of 'forms of life' is any real advance.
Why?
Perhaps the answer is that Wittgenstein, unlike Brouwer, made no contribution to Mathematics. He spoke of Language Games, but unlike Von Neumann or Turing, made no contribution to the very useful mathematical theory of Games, or that of Computational complexity.
Godel's Platonism has an instrumental value for Mathematics and Mathematics, not Wittgenstein, actually clarifies genuinely open problems for the study or use of Language.
Still, Wittgenstein, like Plato, will retain salience for credentialised, as opposed to creative, literary culture by reason of some indefinable charm or appeal to the eternal entitled adolescent we all nurse within ourselves.
For a very different view of Wittgenstein's relationship to Plato there is an excellent article here by a young Professor from New Mexico which may motivate deeper discussion.
As Wittgenstein puts it-
But what is that discovery and why is it valuable?
Let us take a much analysed example- 'Socrates' absurd question' which is at the heart of Plato's Symposium-
Here is one scholarly translation- '... is Love such as to be the love of something/someone or nothing/no-one? I am asking not if it is of a [or a particular] mother or father—for absurd would be the question if Love is love of a mother or father—but as if I were asking about the term father, “Is a father the father of someone or not?” You would have told me, I suppose, if you wanted to answer properly, that it is of a son or a daughter that a father is the father, wouldn’t you?'
Young Greek intellectuals relished this sort of argument because, like the gorgeous paradoxes of the nihilist Gorgias, it turned on a fine point of Grammar- a source of ambiguity which a suave interlocutor could exploit so as to, in a charming manner, steer his audience towards a predetermined goal. This ambiguity has to do with the subjective and objective genitive case and has no salience in English. Indeed, English speaking readers might well think Socrates was a fool and his interlocutors idiots on the basis of passages like this.
By contrast, for the Semitic languages, not just the genitive case but also the notion of Fatherhood- as in God, the Father's, consubstantiality with his Son- or Motherhood- as in 'the mother of the Book'- or daughter-hood- as in 'bat kol' the 'daughter of the voice' from Heaven- had a quite different semantic force and range of associations precisely because all genealogy led back to the univocal Godhead.
Socrates' question, as posed by Shelley- a young aristocrat at odds with his wealthy father- is indeed absurd for an English speaker because we feel very strongly that family ties don't define us. By contrast, in the Middle East, it is common to refer to a man as 'Abu' (father of) or a woman as 'Umm' (mother of) their eldest son or daughter.
For the last few centuries, Plato's trajectory in the East has been in the direction of a populist univocity and subaltern illuminationism. In the technocratic West, however, Platonism retains salience only in the Philosophy of Mathematics.
Wittgenstein, however, believed that it was a mistake to think Mathematics could have Philosophical problems. Rather Philosophy's task was to get clear of any difficulty Mathematics was making for itself so as to get a bird's eye view of what was involved without any contradiction actually being resolved.
A Mathematical treatment of what happens when a 'democratic' Social Choice mechanism treats of a multi dimensional 'policy space' is given by the McKelvey Chaos theorem. Simply put, we can show by purely mathematical means that adding dimensions to a problem means that controlling the agenda- i.e. deciding in what order to pose yes/no questions- can yield any possible outcome.
Another way of arriving at the same insight is to see Semantics as a 'Co-ordination problem'. Clearly we are all better off if we have a means to co-ordinate our actions through Language. Thomas Schelling put forward a notion of 'focal points' which 'naturally' solved the co-ordination problem under conditions of decentralized decision making. David Lewis based his theory of 'Conventions' on Schelling's insight.
Does this means there's some democratic way of getting rid of semantic problems from public discourse? No. One 'focal solution' may be more efficient or computationally less costly than another. Even without any strategic behavior, there would be some uncertainty and debate and confusion because information is costly to process and change takes time.
Factor in, strategic behavior- e.g. 'agenda control'- and there's going to be, not just frictional 'noise' creating a 'signal extraction problem' but also all sorts of 'hysteresis effects' and collectively irrational 'bubbles'- just like in the global financial system when it became 'incentive incompatible'- i.e. when politicians and money managers had perverse incentives.
Fans of Wittgenstein- or a broader philosophical 'linguistic turn', not to mention paranoid 'epistemologies of suspicion' or uncritical 'critical theory'- could pretend that by clarifying language they would be ineluctably led to some liberative insight. 'The civil status of a contradiction' might turn out to refer to some Marxian Crisis or Marcusian Lysis.
Meanwhile, on the Right, some 'neo-conservatives' allegedly believed that the elite could hang on to a clear sighted view of how things really work, and how they must be allowed to work, while writing high falutin' nonsense so as to add noise to signal as part of some soi disant 'Noble Lie'.
Both views were shallow and self serving. A little honest mathematical work- like that of John Muth- supplemented by proper empirical research could easily put paid to the notion that ordinary human beings are prisoners of Language or Culture or Gramscian 'Hegemony' or Butlerian 'Perfomativity' or Bhabha's 'hybridity' or any other such fatuous academic 'availability cascade'.
But why should this be? How can ordinary people be smarter than apple polishing PhD candidates> Well, the fact is we have evolved over tens of thousands of years to use Language strategically- i.e. lie and be lied to- and to be sensitive to the appearance of focal points as solutions to co-ordination games. In the short run, we can be fooled- but within a surprisingly short number of iterations we quickly gravitate to the focal point which would be predicted by the correct theory. 'The dead hand of the past'- or 'hysteresis'- does not dictate or render increasingly chaotic our actions in the Social sphere- provided there is a genuine collective benefit from a 'channelization' of behavior.
In practice, because we have evolved under Knightian Uncertainty, dis-coordination games and the damming up of 'capacitance diversity' also features in the relevant Evolutionary Stable 'regret minimizing' strategy.
Socrates, of course, was not a 'Social Scientist'. Even on his way to the Court Hearing where he would be condemned to death, he wished to practice the intellectual 'midwifery', or method of maieutics, which has immortalized his name.
Thus, in the Theaetetus, he puzzles over how Knowledge might have a canonical definition as 'true judgment with an account'.
The answer is that we know that the underlying co-ordination problem for agents is solvable by agreeing to be bound by 'artificial reason'- i.e. a system of endogenous protocols which may evolve on a fitness landscape but which is not itself revocable by some fact of what appears to be 'natural law' nor by a 'bat kol' or 'voice from Heaven'.
Socrates, on the brink of a fatal judgment, is, however, concerned with ultimate things. He recounts a dream which suggests that there might be an underlying 'alphabet' or (what Descartes, Leibniz et al would call a mathesis universalis or characteristica universalis) corresponding to the elementary particles or principles (stoichea) from which all Reality is built up. The trouble is these stoicheia may not be knowable, or the work of a Gnostic demiurge, so it is either futile or foolish to hope, at this early stage, that 'true judgement' can render a proper 'account' in terms of the 'alphabet of Being' or 'Theory of Everything'.
Still, one can have as many disparate ' artificial reason Dialogics' as one likes solving different types of problems. When abstract Mathematics advances enough, it can re-unite such Dialogics on the basis of greater generality. Interestingly, when this is done Platonism (as opposed to Socratic or Stoic doubt) does not disappear, rather it re-emerges in a useful way but only because a genuine Mathematical advance hangs in the balance. By contrast, Wittgenstein's own attempt at founding his project on 'atomic propositions' came a cropper. It is not clear that his later notion of 'forms of life' is any real advance.
Why?
Perhaps the answer is that Wittgenstein, unlike Brouwer, made no contribution to Mathematics. He spoke of Language Games, but unlike Von Neumann or Turing, made no contribution to the very useful mathematical theory of Games, or that of Computational complexity.
Godel's Platonism has an instrumental value for Mathematics and Mathematics, not Wittgenstein, actually clarifies genuinely open problems for the study or use of Language.
Still, Wittgenstein, like Plato, will retain salience for credentialised, as opposed to creative, literary culture by reason of some indefinable charm or appeal to the eternal entitled adolescent we all nurse within ourselves.
For a very different view of Wittgenstein's relationship to Plato there is an excellent article here by a young Professor from New Mexico which may motivate deeper discussion.
Thursday, 17 November 2016
Trump, Brexit & Plato's strange Symposium.
The Greeks are considered the founders of our modern Sciences. A Medical student in China or Saudi Arabia has to learn Greek terms for everything that pertains to organic processes. No doubt, there is a 'subaltern' non-allopathic tradition- but even practitioners of acupuncture or ayurveda now have to learn a neo-Greek vocabulary, unknown to 'Unani' Medicine- itself a term which derives from ancient Ionia as referring to Greece.
Even in Mathematics, or disciplines which aspire to Mathematical exactitude or apodicticity - like Economics- students have to learn the Greek alphabet and to deploy Greek words- like 'Economics' itself- in a sense Aristotle would not have recognized.
Plato's Symposium occurred at a strange time. Some young men, disguising their faces under their cloaks- 'hoodies' we'd now call them- had run amok defacing statues of Hermes- the messenger God of Diplomacy and Interpretation- hence the word 'Hermeneutics'- and the notion of 'keeping channels of communication open'.
Was this an act of drunken rowdyism or was there a political meaning to this shameful act? Perhaps, the message was, Athens should turn its back on the peacenik 'proxenos'- the Ambassador or, more accurately, the native with an emotional tie to a foreign polis, who served as its advocate or helpful intermediary.
The other great scandal of the day, was the supposed involvement of some members of the elite- including people who attended the Symposium Plato immortalized- were privately celebrating the Eleusian Mysteries- which involved a ceremonial 'rebirth'- in a manner subversive of the system of lineages by which the Polis was ordered.
Supposing the rumors were true, why would the people of Athens felt so threatened by a private ceremony?
One view of Athens is that it had achieved prosperity and what Joseph Nye calls 'soft power', thanks to its openness to ideas, ancient- for example the Arts and Sciences of immemorial Egypt- and contemporary- even the Indian 'gymnosophist' had a place. However, that very openness, might have fuelled paranoia, that some new cult or coalition might subvert the constitution for private gain. Perhaps, what worried people most was that new ties, different to those of blood, and new protocols of mutual obligation, which owed nothing to traditional institutions, were being established at a time when their own security and economic well being appeared increasingly precarious.
As an island nation, protected by 'wooden walls'- i.e. its Navy- Britain has always identified with Athens. Its very insularity depended upon an unceasing maritime vigilance and activity which brought it into touch with the remotest continents. Its laws protected those fleeing persecution as well as those who wished to participate in its global commerce. Its Social Structure, too, encouraged class mobility based on enterprise and education. Now, following the Brexit vote, some are questioning Britain's future path.
It has been suggested that Athens' uniqueness stems from a reform of Solon's such that it became the Greek City where the 'metic'- i.e. the skilled migrant or freed slave- could best flourish and enhance both the 'hard' and 'soft power' of the Polis. It has been pointed out that the scene for Plato's Republic- a dialogue concerned with the ideal political order for a City State- was the house of a metic, Cephalus, a wealthy retired merchant. Lysias, the son of Cephalus, achieved fame as a teacher of rhetoric and legal speech-writer. During the reign of the 'Thirty Tyrants'- oligarchs imposed upon Athens by its enemy, Sparta- he and his brother were seized as aliens and ordered to be put to death- Lysias was lucky to get away. Later he returned to prosecute those at whose hands his family had suffered.
Plato's dialogues referred to people who were well known to have played a part, or to have suffered, during the political vicissitudes which Athens underwent as it struggled to balance the desire for unjust enrichment through foreign adventures with its own vulnerabilities to its envious rivals and the rising power of the Persian satrap. These strains were reduplicated within the polity. Some aristocrats had inherited great wealth and, like the young Alcibiades, improved on their natural endowments and attractions by cultivating the art of rhetoric- as taught by sophists like Gorgias, a native of Sicily who had earned great wealth from his lectures- so as to sway the assembly to punish their rivals and enemies while granting them power to achieve their own ambitions.
In the Republic, Socrates argues that since an Aristocracy might, over time, diminish in inherited wealth, there was a danger that the young Aristocrat, feeling his inheritance insufficient, would become overly ambitious and driven by 'thymos' (spiritedness). Thus an Aristocracy might give way to a 'Timocracy' where Glory counted for most and military adventurism became endemic unless checked by the Law Courts or the General Assembly of the citizens. The Timocrat would then seek to escape these curbs by gaining fabulous wealth so as to hire lawyers and venal politicians. Thus the Timocracy would become an Oligarchy. The son of the oligarch, however, having grown up without ever having felt the pinch of want or the need to economize, might be resentful of any curb whatsoever upon his conduct and value freedom (negative freedom, we might say, as the absence of restraint) above all things and thus advocate of a type of Democracy freed of all Legal or Institutional constraint.
At present, Donald Trump has been hailed by some as representing a Democracy fed up with 'political correctness' and as giving a voice to those left behind by 'the elites' and the 'experts'. His son-in-law, scion of a very wealth family, seems to have put an end to Gov. Chris Christie's ambitions in the new Administration because the latter prosecuted and put the former's father in jail. It may thus appear that Trump's victory is that of an oligarchy which has turned to Democracy so as to remove any check upon its actions and attitudes.
However, the opposite point might be argued with greater empirical evidence. The oligarchy already had a favorable regime when it came to Capital mobility and could afford to sacrifice the pretense of a 'rules based' liberal world order, or a domestic commitment to restoring living standards and life chances. The fact is, Obama focused on the 'Rust belt' while being prepared to take a hit in the 'Sun belt' in 2012 and this strategy worked against the billionaire Romney. Hillary Clinton had a well financed 'top down' campaign but failed to mobilize local networks where it most mattered. It was a case of 'win-win' for the oligarchy.
Still, whatever Brexit and Trump's victory portends, it is difficult to believe that the political history of ancient Athens could have very much relevance or predictive power to our hi-tech globalized world. Indeed, it is not clear that Socrates or Plato or Xenophon or that humble metic-philosophers like 'Simon the shoemaker'- who was closest to Socrates in social class- actually did anything to retard or advance the cause of good government in their native Polis.
Indeed, ever since Nietzche, the modern world has found Socrates's method of argumentation less and less appealing. Karl Popper attacked Plato for having given a philosophical justification for the worst totalitarian regimes. Currently, Plato's ideas are associated with the notion- congenial to certain billionaires- that we all actually live in a computer simulation.
Whenever people meet, and remain strangers to each other, Hermes weds Eris, some unwarranted strife is born because of the provisional or private, the contingent or more or less corrupting nature of the underlying interpretive or hermeneutic act.
Over time, as such contacts are kept up, we see that something new has been born- Wittgenstein would call it a 'language game'- and it is this 'game' which, like a child reshaping domestic discourse, takes the lead in giving communication a horizon on the far side of the Hermeneutic bubble.
The Academy thinks that Socrates was inventing a couvade ritual- a false pregnancy which men complain of suffering- by which imaginary animals became available for, not the dinner table, but to provide questing fewmets for a Scholastic Unicorn hunt.
The story of Agnodice tells a different story. Socrates was put to death for 'seducing the young men'. Agnodice, who trained in Egypt, disguised herself as a man to visit women in travail. She was accused of 'seducing the young women'. She easily cleared herself of that charge by lifting her skirt.
Agnodice did real good. Men did not vote to kill her because their own hope for sons depended on her skills.
Socrates' death made no real difference. That's why he chose to both die and practice 'mousikie'- i.e the ancient equivalent of what Bob Dylan just got the Nobel prize for- but what was his big shtick?
Metaxu - that empathic and imaginative middle way taught by the Buddha, and known as barzakh to the Sufis and antarabhava or bardo to the Hindus and Buddhists.
This is a difficult concept to understand. It hasn't been particularly fruitful in the Academy. Yet, somehow it strikes a chord with ordinary people
I happen to be a Hindu whose 'kula devam' (family deity) is Kumara- best depicted as a little boy who wants to sleep between his parents. However, they melt into each other to become 'Ardhanarishvara'- God who is half woman, half man. The puzzled infant asks his elder brother Ganesha, who symoblises wisdom- 'what happens to the other half of Mum, of Dad, when they merge to form Ardhanarishvara?'
Ganesha replies 'They re-appear on Earth as Everyman, Everywoman.'
Perhaps, we make a mistake in thinking that the Greeks broke the tradition of the ancient, pre-Greek, Eleusian Religion by splitting up the Godhead into different and warring divinities. Perhaps, that was just a dramatic manner of speaking or a useful heuristic for essentially Statistical, or Empirical, Sciences.
Socrates's strange Symposium ends by offering us a vision of our own being as, like the baby Kumara, the child of both Poverty and Possession- the mendicant Shiva and the All-Maternal Power known as Shakti.
Socio-biology- Dawkin's 'extended phenotype principle'- permits us to view all living things as existing kinetically only by reason of a sort of potentially maternal affection our every constituent part bears some potential constituent part of every possible other. It may be infinitely plastic. Yet, there is a part of us which finds the prospect appalling and utterly estranging.
Thomas De Quincey recounted his opium fuelled vision of the promiscuous inter-connectedness of Dawkins' Bios in a purple passage which much influenced Oscar Wilde-
'Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.'
At about the same time, a young Etonian was reading a book about Kerala- 'the Empire of the Nairs'- written a few years earlier by another old Etonian. Shelley, for it was he, was inspired by the nobility and freedom of Nair women and wrote an incandescent translation of Plato's Symposium which, eighty years later, inspired South Indian poets.
I must admit, I find Shelley dull- and Subramaniyam Bharati, Shelley's Tamil disciple, is something of a joke figure nowadays- yet I am compelled to admit that Plato's Symposium will always be read by a select few- an 'elite' if you like, but an 'elite' vanguard storming the battlements of entrenched privilege- in a liberative manner.
Even in Mathematics, or disciplines which aspire to Mathematical exactitude or apodicticity - like Economics- students have to learn the Greek alphabet and to deploy Greek words- like 'Economics' itself- in a sense Aristotle would not have recognized.
Plato's Symposium occurred at a strange time. Some young men, disguising their faces under their cloaks- 'hoodies' we'd now call them- had run amok defacing statues of Hermes- the messenger God of Diplomacy and Interpretation- hence the word 'Hermeneutics'- and the notion of 'keeping channels of communication open'.
Was this an act of drunken rowdyism or was there a political meaning to this shameful act? Perhaps, the message was, Athens should turn its back on the peacenik 'proxenos'- the Ambassador or, more accurately, the native with an emotional tie to a foreign polis, who served as its advocate or helpful intermediary.
The other great scandal of the day, was the supposed involvement of some members of the elite- including people who attended the Symposium Plato immortalized- were privately celebrating the Eleusian Mysteries- which involved a ceremonial 'rebirth'- in a manner subversive of the system of lineages by which the Polis was ordered.
Supposing the rumors were true, why would the people of Athens felt so threatened by a private ceremony?
One view of Athens is that it had achieved prosperity and what Joseph Nye calls 'soft power', thanks to its openness to ideas, ancient- for example the Arts and Sciences of immemorial Egypt- and contemporary- even the Indian 'gymnosophist' had a place. However, that very openness, might have fuelled paranoia, that some new cult or coalition might subvert the constitution for private gain. Perhaps, what worried people most was that new ties, different to those of blood, and new protocols of mutual obligation, which owed nothing to traditional institutions, were being established at a time when their own security and economic well being appeared increasingly precarious.
As an island nation, protected by 'wooden walls'- i.e. its Navy- Britain has always identified with Athens. Its very insularity depended upon an unceasing maritime vigilance and activity which brought it into touch with the remotest continents. Its laws protected those fleeing persecution as well as those who wished to participate in its global commerce. Its Social Structure, too, encouraged class mobility based on enterprise and education. Now, following the Brexit vote, some are questioning Britain's future path.
It has been suggested that Athens' uniqueness stems from a reform of Solon's such that it became the Greek City where the 'metic'- i.e. the skilled migrant or freed slave- could best flourish and enhance both the 'hard' and 'soft power' of the Polis. It has been pointed out that the scene for Plato's Republic- a dialogue concerned with the ideal political order for a City State- was the house of a metic, Cephalus, a wealthy retired merchant. Lysias, the son of Cephalus, achieved fame as a teacher of rhetoric and legal speech-writer. During the reign of the 'Thirty Tyrants'- oligarchs imposed upon Athens by its enemy, Sparta- he and his brother were seized as aliens and ordered to be put to death- Lysias was lucky to get away. Later he returned to prosecute those at whose hands his family had suffered.
Plato's dialogues referred to people who were well known to have played a part, or to have suffered, during the political vicissitudes which Athens underwent as it struggled to balance the desire for unjust enrichment through foreign adventures with its own vulnerabilities to its envious rivals and the rising power of the Persian satrap. These strains were reduplicated within the polity. Some aristocrats had inherited great wealth and, like the young Alcibiades, improved on their natural endowments and attractions by cultivating the art of rhetoric- as taught by sophists like Gorgias, a native of Sicily who had earned great wealth from his lectures- so as to sway the assembly to punish their rivals and enemies while granting them power to achieve their own ambitions.
In the Republic, Socrates argues that since an Aristocracy might, over time, diminish in inherited wealth, there was a danger that the young Aristocrat, feeling his inheritance insufficient, would become overly ambitious and driven by 'thymos' (spiritedness). Thus an Aristocracy might give way to a 'Timocracy' where Glory counted for most and military adventurism became endemic unless checked by the Law Courts or the General Assembly of the citizens. The Timocrat would then seek to escape these curbs by gaining fabulous wealth so as to hire lawyers and venal politicians. Thus the Timocracy would become an Oligarchy. The son of the oligarch, however, having grown up without ever having felt the pinch of want or the need to economize, might be resentful of any curb whatsoever upon his conduct and value freedom (negative freedom, we might say, as the absence of restraint) above all things and thus advocate of a type of Democracy freed of all Legal or Institutional constraint.
At present, Donald Trump has been hailed by some as representing a Democracy fed up with 'political correctness' and as giving a voice to those left behind by 'the elites' and the 'experts'. His son-in-law, scion of a very wealth family, seems to have put an end to Gov. Chris Christie's ambitions in the new Administration because the latter prosecuted and put the former's father in jail. It may thus appear that Trump's victory is that of an oligarchy which has turned to Democracy so as to remove any check upon its actions and attitudes.
However, the opposite point might be argued with greater empirical evidence. The oligarchy already had a favorable regime when it came to Capital mobility and could afford to sacrifice the pretense of a 'rules based' liberal world order, or a domestic commitment to restoring living standards and life chances. The fact is, Obama focused on the 'Rust belt' while being prepared to take a hit in the 'Sun belt' in 2012 and this strategy worked against the billionaire Romney. Hillary Clinton had a well financed 'top down' campaign but failed to mobilize local networks where it most mattered. It was a case of 'win-win' for the oligarchy.
Still, whatever Brexit and Trump's victory portends, it is difficult to believe that the political history of ancient Athens could have very much relevance or predictive power to our hi-tech globalized world. Indeed, it is not clear that Socrates or Plato or Xenophon or that humble metic-philosophers like 'Simon the shoemaker'- who was closest to Socrates in social class- actually did anything to retard or advance the cause of good government in their native Polis.
Indeed, ever since Nietzche, the modern world has found Socrates's method of argumentation less and less appealing. Karl Popper attacked Plato for having given a philosophical justification for the worst totalitarian regimes. Currently, Plato's ideas are associated with the notion- congenial to certain billionaires- that we all actually live in a computer simulation.
In this context, can Plato's Symposium be read in a manner which offers us hope?
One reason to think so has to do with the fact that Socrates isn't indulging here in the sort of word games or rhetorical tricks which appear seductive to entitled adolescents, as yet, barred from the agora or the full possession of their Trust Fund and hence who are forced to mark time in the groves of Academe for the nonce.
Poets speak of Love as 'two becoming one'- 'a more perfect union'- but that's just a metaphor- a figure of speech- and any grand narrative involving the soul which features 'the transfiguring power of Love' stumbles at the first and most obvious hurdle. Eros may draw two together but that story ends with the calling of the mid-wife (Socrates's mother was one) and so what actually happens is that 'two becomes three'. A husband may well browbeat his wife, or a wife may establish ascendancy over her husband, but when a child is born and begins to speak, all the agreed meanings of terms used in domestic discourse are turned on their head. For, metic households, it often happens that Mum and Dad actually speak a different language from the child! It is the child's idioms and methods of argument that the parents pick up. Even in aristocratic households, children slowly get the upper hand. It is their needs and interests which gradually modify domestic discourse and reshape its mise en scene.
Over time, as such contacts are kept up, we see that something new has been born- Wittgenstein would call it a 'language game'- and it is this 'game' which, like a child reshaping domestic discourse, takes the lead in giving communication a horizon on the far side of the Hermeneutic bubble.
The Academy thinks that Socrates was inventing a couvade ritual- a false pregnancy which men complain of suffering- by which imaginary animals became available for, not the dinner table, but to provide questing fewmets for a Scholastic Unicorn hunt.
The story of Agnodice tells a different story. Socrates was put to death for 'seducing the young men'. Agnodice, who trained in Egypt, disguised herself as a man to visit women in travail. She was accused of 'seducing the young women'. She easily cleared herself of that charge by lifting her skirt.
Agnodice did real good. Men did not vote to kill her because their own hope for sons depended on her skills.
Socrates' death made no real difference. That's why he chose to both die and practice 'mousikie'- i.e the ancient equivalent of what Bob Dylan just got the Nobel prize for- but what was his big shtick?
Metaxu - that empathic and imaginative middle way taught by the Buddha, and known as barzakh to the Sufis and antarabhava or bardo to the Hindus and Buddhists.
This is a difficult concept to understand. It hasn't been particularly fruitful in the Academy. Yet, somehow it strikes a chord with ordinary people
I happen to be a Hindu whose 'kula devam' (family deity) is Kumara- best depicted as a little boy who wants to sleep between his parents. However, they melt into each other to become 'Ardhanarishvara'- God who is half woman, half man. The puzzled infant asks his elder brother Ganesha, who symoblises wisdom- 'what happens to the other half of Mum, of Dad, when they merge to form Ardhanarishvara?'
Ganesha replies 'They re-appear on Earth as Everyman, Everywoman.'
Perhaps, we make a mistake in thinking that the Greeks broke the tradition of the ancient, pre-Greek, Eleusian Religion by splitting up the Godhead into different and warring divinities. Perhaps, that was just a dramatic manner of speaking or a useful heuristic for essentially Statistical, or Empirical, Sciences.
Socrates's strange Symposium ends by offering us a vision of our own being as, like the baby Kumara, the child of both Poverty and Possession- the mendicant Shiva and the All-Maternal Power known as Shakti.
Socio-biology- Dawkin's 'extended phenotype principle'- permits us to view all living things as existing kinetically only by reason of a sort of potentially maternal affection our every constituent part bears some potential constituent part of every possible other. It may be infinitely plastic. Yet, there is a part of us which finds the prospect appalling and utterly estranging.
Thomas De Quincey recounted his opium fuelled vision of the promiscuous inter-connectedness of Dawkins' Bios in a purple passage which much influenced Oscar Wilde-
'Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.'
At about the same time, a young Etonian was reading a book about Kerala- 'the Empire of the Nairs'- written a few years earlier by another old Etonian. Shelley, for it was he, was inspired by the nobility and freedom of Nair women and wrote an incandescent translation of Plato's Symposium which, eighty years later, inspired South Indian poets.
I must admit, I find Shelley dull- and Subramaniyam Bharati, Shelley's Tamil disciple, is something of a joke figure nowadays- yet I am compelled to admit that Plato's Symposium will always be read by a select few- an 'elite' if you like, but an 'elite' vanguard storming the battlements of entrenched privilege- in a liberative manner.
What do you think?
Have I been carried away by my own wind of words?
Or can Symposia still matter?
Monday, 14 November 2016
Invitation
Plato's Symposium is a classic of, not just Western Philosophy, but also Islamic, Sufi, thought. There is a curious irony that a drinking party held over two thousand years ago now denotes a dry-and-dust academic seminar. In Sufi poetry, similarly, the Tavern and the Wine pourer (Saqi) are merely metaphors for a Platonic gnosis- no actual drinking is meant. Hinduism and Buddhism- which are unconnected to Plato's philosophy- dismiss wine as sinful and it only in Chinese philosophy that the wine cup comes again into its own in the 'pure conversation' school.
What is the great attraction of this book by Plato about a bunch of guys getting drunk? I suppose it is that there is 'truth in wine' and their axle of discourse turns upon the question it is most difficult to be honest about- why are we attracted to some people and not others? What is the basis of Love, of Friendship, of those ties which we, in our hearts, believe not even Death can break?
The Barmecides were a family of polymaths who served the Abbasid Sultans. They are familiar to us from the Arabian Nights. It was at their symposiums in Baghdad over a thousand years ago that Buddhist and Greek Philosophy were reconciled to the sacred revelations vouchsafed the great Semitic prophets. Robert Irwin gives an account here of the canonical symposium devoted to the question raised at Plato's Symposium whose echoes are still with us in every ghazal or qasidah written in any language where Sufism has spread its wings. More particularly, it is in Persian poetry- and the poetry of the languages influenced by Persian- that the question of Love- ennobling and refining Love, Platonic Love- became central to Philosophy, or, indeed, Soteriology.
The Hindus took a different path to the same destination. They had begun by considering 'suhrit prapti'- the gaining of 'like-hearted' companions- as the first step in 'Yoga'- which the great mathematician, Grothendieck, has described as the attempt to unite disparate ratocinative systems on the basis of greater generality. However, the Hindus came to see the 'Viyogini'- the woman separated from her lover- as superior even to the master Yogi. In the poetry of Amir Khusrau- Hinduism and Islam became indistinguishable- a proof that Philosophy can serve plural communities.
What about China? The Persians and Chinese compete for the title of having the best wine poetry- but whereas the wine is merely metaphorical in the best Persian verse, it is real-all-too-real and dangerously potent whether quaffed by Du Fu or Li Po.
My own feeling- perhaps because my training was in mathematical Economics- is that there is a yet stranger symposium we can audit than one where Socrates matches cups with Confucius while Qoheleth tunes David's harp. Evolutionary Game Theory is a scientific attempt to address the question of Love. It is far from perfect- even Ken Binmore's attempt to 'de-Kant' ethics with its aid is risible- but it gets us to 'open questions' in Mathematics which illuminate what Collingwood called Philosophy's 'distinctions without a difference'.
This is a sort of discourse which, simply by being alive, simply by seeking out strangeness or befriending strangers, we all participate in consciously or not and so our finding words to match what is within our hearts is itself Platonic methexis.
What do you think?
What is the great attraction of this book by Plato about a bunch of guys getting drunk? I suppose it is that there is 'truth in wine' and their axle of discourse turns upon the question it is most difficult to be honest about- why are we attracted to some people and not others? What is the basis of Love, of Friendship, of those ties which we, in our hearts, believe not even Death can break?
The Barmecides were a family of polymaths who served the Abbasid Sultans. They are familiar to us from the Arabian Nights. It was at their symposiums in Baghdad over a thousand years ago that Buddhist and Greek Philosophy were reconciled to the sacred revelations vouchsafed the great Semitic prophets. Robert Irwin gives an account here of the canonical symposium devoted to the question raised at Plato's Symposium whose echoes are still with us in every ghazal or qasidah written in any language where Sufism has spread its wings. More particularly, it is in Persian poetry- and the poetry of the languages influenced by Persian- that the question of Love- ennobling and refining Love, Platonic Love- became central to Philosophy, or, indeed, Soteriology.
The Hindus took a different path to the same destination. They had begun by considering 'suhrit prapti'- the gaining of 'like-hearted' companions- as the first step in 'Yoga'- which the great mathematician, Grothendieck, has described as the attempt to unite disparate ratocinative systems on the basis of greater generality. However, the Hindus came to see the 'Viyogini'- the woman separated from her lover- as superior even to the master Yogi. In the poetry of Amir Khusrau- Hinduism and Islam became indistinguishable- a proof that Philosophy can serve plural communities.
What about China? The Persians and Chinese compete for the title of having the best wine poetry- but whereas the wine is merely metaphorical in the best Persian verse, it is real-all-too-real and dangerously potent whether quaffed by Du Fu or Li Po.
My own feeling- perhaps because my training was in mathematical Economics- is that there is a yet stranger symposium we can audit than one where Socrates matches cups with Confucius while Qoheleth tunes David's harp. Evolutionary Game Theory is a scientific attempt to address the question of Love. It is far from perfect- even Ken Binmore's attempt to 'de-Kant' ethics with its aid is risible- but it gets us to 'open questions' in Mathematics which illuminate what Collingwood called Philosophy's 'distinctions without a difference'.
This is a sort of discourse which, simply by being alive, simply by seeking out strangeness or befriending strangers, we all participate in consciously or not and so our finding words to match what is within our hearts is itself Platonic methexis.
What do you think?
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