Going for the One (Lecture #2)

GOING FOR THE ONE

Second Lecture

Dear Members of the Class of Introductory Course Social and Political Philosophy, Penn State University, Spring Semester 2017 (1-17-17).

Let us first again begin again, let’s begin again.  First of all, let’s become present.  One more time, to this time, to this place, to this misty morning.  

As you may recall, in the preliminary lecture last week, I mentioned that I am honored to be teaching this course and with the authority that the state has invested the University and that the University has invested me with the mandate to instruct this class.  It is an audacious prospect.  I do not take it lightly.  

I am reminded once again of the words of Paul Simon’s haunting song, The American Tune:

We come on the ship that sailed, the Mayflower,

We come on a ship that sailed the moon,

We come in the age’s most uncertain hour and sing an American tune.

To sing an American tune, what an expression, what an apt expression!  But what can this give us to think?  What kind of tune is this American tune?  Who can sing it?  Can you sing it?  Why now?  Why not?  The song gives us the tenor and pathos of this lecture series.  There is a sense of uncertainty and foreboding, even confusion as we embark, and we set forth on the sea of moving emotion.  

When we had considered the timeline and chronology and that which we could envision our scope – this course has a scope –we referred to the image of a bird perched aloft, gazing over the centuries.  Using two skills of scoping.   One broad scope, the broader scope (and I brought little accoutrements)--binoculars for broad view.  You see, this is my eye.  I see.  It’s not my eye who sees, it’s the "I" who sees.  It’s my brain who sees.  I see.  With this I have additional long-range scoping power.  The long-range scoping power, that is my tendency.  My tendency is to think in broad terms anyway, so that tends to be my modus operandi.  And then there is another way we see with another accoutrement – the magnifying glass---i.e. to see with detail.  The fine tuning.  Broad and narrow scopes, the first set of accoutrements in our toolkit.  

Perched like a bird, gazing over these centuries.  I am reminded of the lyrics of the Moody Blues:

Take another sip, my love, and see what you will see.

A fleet of golden galleons upon a crystal sea.  

A fleet of golden galleons upon a crystal sea.  

The scope and breadth of this task is truly daunting, and yet this is what we have been mutually tasked by the University to do, both today and for the following 16 weeks. In fact, this is so audacious in this present time, to embark upon this intellectual voyage of political thought over 2500 years.  And yet we are emboldened because of the ones who have gone before us carrying the torches aloft.  Like Plato, like Aristotle, like Dostoyevsky, like Franklin, and like Jefferson, we are charged with the same task of understanding about social and political matters.  And were it not for the ones who have gone before us, we would be most handicapped, most blind.  Yet, with the help of these thinkers like Plato, like a crutch that helps us to carry us, we are able to mount to their high level of understanding.  

A brief reading from a fairly decent translation of Plato reveals a miracle of understanding.  Miracle--- not for Plato --– for us.  Alfred North Whitehead famously stated, “All philosophy is but a footnote to Plato.”  The undertaking is the same, though many years have passed.  This is a miracle for understanding.  

Since I am laying now the groundwork for this lecture series, I must ask that we consider the actual understanding that we are engaged in now, presently and immediately and have already been engaged in since the lecture began.  The understanding that is achieved here and now, thanks to a teacher-student relationship.  If you have a question, just jot it down, and we can look at it when we get there.  We have a common task.  My task is your task.  Your task is my task.  Understanding happens in between, thanks to the teacher-student mesh: as it were, two parts of the same understanding, the self-understanding of this course, shared.  My understanding completes your understanding.  Your understanding completes my understanding.  

Here is a very important point coming up while we’re looking at this.  Looking even more carefully now at this, we notice that without any accoutrements, our understanding achieves itself.  Without any accoutrements, our understanding achieves itself.  Understanding achieves itself immediately, without cost, immediately.  And it is egalitarian. We all share the same access to understanding.  

In short, this is the substance of our humanity that we encounter each time in the encounter, in the wonder of authentic teaching. The wonder of authentic thinkin!.  Here and now, in a purely analog manner.   This is what I mean by analog.: no accoutrements.  The understanding that we have already achieved and are achieving and immediately now are achieving, and here and now are achieving, which is most self-evident in that you have in your own thinking-through of understanding immediately, the grasping of what I am speaking.  Your thinking, your understanding is immediate, unmediated, without accoutrement. That’s what I mean by analog.  It’s your own humanity.  And it’s free of cost.  And it’s here and now.  And it’s egalitarian.  And it’s purely analog.  It’s beautiful.  You should be thankful.  You should give thanks for this gift that you have been given.  Mighty thanks for this great treasure you possess in understanding.  You understand me.   And we can understand Plato, too.  And this is just a miracle for us.

Last week we read the passage from the seventh letter of Plato, and I’d like to read it again just to remind us of how we understand it, how we understood it, and how we are understanding it.  Plato tells us, and he was very ambitious.  I was too.  I was once your age.  I was once a university student.  I was once very ambitious. Ambitious means I have political – and by political, I mean the broadest sense – the thought that I could change the world, maybe make it a better place.   Maybe an education would help me.  Plato thought so, too.  But when he saw the kind of men...

“When I saw the kind of men who were active in politics and the principles on which things were managed, I concluded that it was difficult to take part in public life and retain one’s integrity.  This feeling became stronger the more I observed, the older I became.  Nothing could be done without friends and loyal associates, [cronies].  Such men were not easy to find among one’s existing acquaintances. . . . I, who began so full of enthusiasm for a political career, ended up by growing dizzy at the spectacle of universal confusion.  I did not cease to consider how an improvement might be affected in this particular situation and in politics in general.”  [He kept thinking about it.]  “But finally I came to the conclusion that the condition of all existing states is bad.”  [Bad hombres.  Bad states.]  “Nothing can cure their constitutions but a miraculous reform, assisted by good luck.  And I was driven to assert in praise of true philosophy, nothing else can enable one to see what is right for states and for individuals, and that troubles of mankind will never cease until either truth and genuine philosophers attain political power, or the rulers of states, by some dispensation of providence, become genuine philosophers.”  

You have understood this.  You have understood the words of a man who has written this book so long ago that it is a miracle that we even have any fragmentary evidence of such a text existing, and from such a foreign language that is translated and that we are able to grasp this.  I want to emphasize this again and again.  We are already engaged in the miracle of understanding.  Don’t take this for granted. This is your treasure

Hearing with attention brings understanding.  Listener must listen carefully. Reader must read with understanding.  Absolutely essential point.  Reader must read with understanding.  You want me to show you how you can read without understanding.  I’ll try:

This is a report on NPR: SO, If they wish to achieve security, must choose our mutual consultation, best men they can find . . .

You hear it on the advertising; you hear it on the radio.  You hear this blasé talk, no understanding.  It’s reading the news.  You hear it at the end of the commercials where they speed it up.  The pharmaceutical commercials:

“May cause slight stomachache, nausea, blindness and death.”

And they speed it up; “[rapid speech] and we’ll take all your property.  Just click here, just click and sign off on that for us, please.” Such highly inauthentic speech is lamentable. On the other hand, we have the potential of being authentic and true to our deepest convictions.

We take it for granted, but this is a miracle. It may be simple, but it is a miracle. This is the miracle of our own understanding.  Not my understanding, not Plato’s understanding, but your understanding.  Whether there is progress in nature or technology, it is hard to say.  However, to declare that there is progress within our own understanding of our own humanity or our sense of wonder concerning the truth that we seek, then we are sorely mistaken.  There has been no progress in the actual manner of our own human self-understanding with Plato, `that’s why when I read it, you can understand it. You understand Plato as if he were your contemporary, as if he had written it yesterday, because what he is saying is absolutely radically relevant to today, 2017.  There has been no progress in human understanding.  Plato understood, you understand and I understand.  Franklin understood.  Jefferson understood. We understand.  There is no progress in human understanding.  Reading this evidences this. 

“But surely, Dr. Wolf, you must be joking.”  The Eric Schmidt and Ginni Rometty (CEO of IBM), and Bill Gates, who host the advent of a so-called “new cognitive era” and a smarter planet, or Watson playing chess or Watson appearing on a quiz show, or Deep Blue supposedly defeating Kasparov (but we found out that that was rigged as well).  This digital nervous system, this smarter planet, this neural network.  Now I ask you, based on your own initial understanding – self-reflecting – would you say that with any technological accoutrement or any app of any sort might enhance the kind of understanding that we are affecting and experiencing and realizing as evidenced here and now?  

[Audience] “No.”  

He says no. Correct.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  

Here’s an accoutrement.  Does it help me to see?  I mean the essential act of seeing.  Wait a second.  There is already an accoutrement. Right?   I’ve been wearing these glasses since kindergarten.  Does it help me to see?  On a trivial sense, yes, but actually it’s the wrong expression.  Does it help me to see?  No I see.  I see with the accoutrement, I see without the accoutrement.  I see with this accoutrement [glasses] and this accoutrement [points to binoculars] and this accoutrement [holds up magnifying glass].  But I see! First of all, I see.  No eye.  Yes, I see with my eye, and I see with my brain, and I see with my thinking, but this act, this essence and substance of my being and this self-understanding is not aided by any optical accoutrement.   And were there none, were there not this initial act of seeing and understanding, these accoutrements would be completely unnecessary.  

So let’s think about then the depth of the question concerning the nature of progress in the paradox that we just revealed that your own self-understanding is a human artifact, a substance, an essence that has no progress over time, has no relationship to time.  And yet there is a doctrine of progress, as we will continue to see throughout the entire lecture series. Very crucial.  We consider the kind of understanding that we have affected, achieved and are evidencing now in our own self-reflection of our own grasping, hearing, of our understanding here and now.  Would these apps and accoutrements have helped Socrates?  Perhaps Watson may offer us a better approach to our quest for truth and better understanding of social and political matters?  To speak frankly, that is the real joke.  However, it is a bitter joke.  

As billions and trillions of dollars representing myriad forces of power and authority throughout the world, human labor, sheer power, and a military industrial complex to defend it with its drone strikes, to maintain this technological, globalized, digital technology, all aiming at what end?  What end does all of this aim at?  What good is it for?, Aristotle would say.  What is the end?  What is its telos?  Keeping now your own eye on your own understanding, what good can this smarter planet be?  If it’s not to provide a better grasp of one’s own human understanding, then what good can it be for any one of us?  And if it’s not good for any one of us, how can it be good for all of us?  It is a question of self-esteem.  The esteem that one has in knowing one’s self, realizing one’s own understanding.  Therefore the great jest, because the technological world and its military industrial complex offers nothing of value to our own self-understanding. We could be having this lecture easily anywhere on campus. Don’t even need the lights.  Don’t need this building.  

Philosophy is free, it’s immediate, it’s here and now, and it’s egalitarian.  Nothing of these accoutrements can add value to our own self-understanding and social and political actors.  The degree of this jest is so deep that to grasp this, one cannot but feel sorry for mankind.  And if sorry for mankind, then sorry for one’s self.  

To realize now that the greatest treasure that you seek is already within your grasp.  This is the essence of your own human being. To realize in the same grasp that the entire world is running astray certainly gives us a great deal to think about.  This, indeed, is the essential matter that we are thinking about in this series of lectures.  This is the thought matter.  The world is running ahead, willy-nilly, and yet we sit here and say, “I’m okay, I’m okay.  I understand my being here.  I give thanks to it as well.”  It’s just a beautiful thing.  What a treasure this is, this self-understanding we possess!  

It will not hurt for us to review a bit this thought-provoking consideration.  That the very essence of our own inquiry, that is the task which is laid out before us in Philosophy 02, sanctioned and authorized by the state and the University, is precisely this self-reflection and this self-understanding that we are already engaged in.  We are already, as it were, swimming in the water of understanding. And now we are realizing, “Wait, I have already been in the water of my own self-understanding.  I just didn’t realize I was there.”  A fish who has never been out of water. But we know that the flying fish is a special kind of fish, like a philosopher.  The flying fish gets out above the water, albeit briefly, that little flight, and realizes, “Wait; there is more than just water?”  This is us when we come to our own self-understanding.  We start to realize, “Wait a second.  I have already been in this water of self-understanding?  Nobody told me?”  Why didn’t they teach you this in kindergarten, second grade, how about fifth, eighth, ninth, tenth?  Why do we wait until a philosophy course to get our first realization of what we are actually doing – learning and understanding?  I don’t know but it is better late than never.

Such an understanding is miracle and treasure, though we have been distracted ten thousand times today.  You have already been distracted ten thousand times this morning.  Here is self-understanding.  I’m not distracted.  I’m a little bit, you know; you can see I’m a little jittery.  Maybe that coffee was a little too strong.  I’m not distracted.  Not to philosophy. Imperturbable.  Imperturbability.  Turba, meaning wave.  The waves are not getting to me.  The waves of turbulence.  That we have been distracted ten thousand times before, yet we go on, aiming for the one, for the true, and the good.   The one.  We are going for the one, going for the one. It helps if we have music, too.  The word means far more when the music is with it.  Notice the word meant more with the poetry. The word means more with the music as well.  

Deep human feelings, our own feelings, thank God.  To realize what is already at work now in our own understanding and implicit in the well-running cosmos.  

So what kind of time do we live in? It’s like the Wizard of Oz, when Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal the megalomaniac charlatan wizard with his computer-like apparatus and projects casting the big-screen image of the Great Wizard.  Projecting this giant image in order to deceive the Munchkins.  That’s us.  Well, we’re Munchkins, but we are also philosophical beings.  What’s he doing?  He is seducing them with distraction.  The screens.  He is distracting them from their own true potential as political and social actors.  He is distracting them from being who they really are and discovering within their own self-understanding their own truth of being of what they already really are.  

One cannot grasp social sciences nor social and political thought without first of all making an examination of one’s own self.  Or better say soul and point of view.  And it is not difficult to see that the emperor wears no clothes.  It’s not difficult to see it, but it is difficult to say it.  Frankly, note that the real revelation is the one that begins in one’s own heart. The true revolution begins in your own heart and not in the fields or in the cities.  All one needs to do is call out for truth to practice philosophy. All you need to do.  You’re engaged in philosophy right now.  You already are.  And all you need to continue practicing it, when we are beyond our classroom here, is to speak out and name the truth.   Continually speak honesty. When a human person speaks in truth and honesty, they stand complete within the essence of the truth of their being, within the cosmos and within their own self-understanding.  Nobody can take that away from you.  

Telling the emperor that he or she wears no clothes has never been popular until that party is dead, as Socrates evidences and other philosophers. They tried to get after Plato and they tried to get after Aristotle, too.  But the one who yells out that the emperor has no clothes, notice how this statement – just making the statement itself, “The emperor wears no clothes,” will bring the empire of illusion to its knees, like Toto did pulling back the curtain on the Wizard.  

It is an exhilarating joy to be able to state this truth, so I, like Martin Luther, say, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise!” This self-understanding.  Or Socrates, right.  His mission statement.  You want to hear Socrates.  Again, let’s ponder as I am reading this, understanding, listening well, grasping the miracle that is occurring within your own understanding in this classroom, here and now.  So at the trial of Socrates, a dialog written by Plato called The Apology; and we have to look at these fine points more carefully on Thursday. But in the lecture sometimes it will seem I am rushing ahead, just putting a few things down here.  But we can touch on all of these points, again, kind of go back through things a little more carefully, sifting through on Thursday.  

But, to set the stage here, Socrates is 70 years old, an old, beautiful, wonderful man, being tried on trumped-up charges in the Athenian court of his time.  Basically, they said, “We’ll give you the option.  You can live, but you have to stop practicing philosophy.”  How many times have they told that to me?  “Dr. Wolf, would you just please, please stop practicing philosophy.” And I had to realize at one point that I was a junkie, that I was so addicted that I said, “You know what, I can’t quit.  I just can’t.  I cannot quit philosophy.”  

Now here’s what Socrates says.  “So you guys say if I give up spending my time on this quest and stop philosophizing, that I can be set free?  But if you catch me going the same way, you will put me to death?  Well, supposing, as I said, that you should offer to quit me on those terms, I would reply, gentlemen, I am very grateful and your devoted servant.  But I owe a greater obedience to God than to you.  And so long as I draw my breath and have my faculties, I shall never stop practicing philosophy.  [Martin Luther:  “Here I stand.”  Thomas Jefferson:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”]  I will never stop this and exhort you, compel you, challenge you, urge you, indicating the truth for everyone that I meet.  And I shall go on saying in my usual way, ‘My very good friend, you are an Athenian and belong to the city which is the greatest and most famous in the world for its wisdom and strength [we could almost substitute Americans for Athenians].  Welcome citizen of the greatest nation of this time.  Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible in simile with reputation and honor and give no attention to thought and truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?” But if any of you disputes me on this and says you do profess to care about these things, I shall not at once let him be.”  [This is that scrapper, the bulldog, Socrates.]  “I am not going to let you go just because you said..., [...you multimillionaires, ‘Yeah, I really take care of my soul.  My family is happy.  We’re ethical people.  I’ve done my ethics quiz and my ethics checklist and I’m fine.’]  “Yet if any of you disputes this and profess to care about these, I shall not at once let him go, I will question him, examine him and put him to the test.  And if it appears, in spite of your profession, that you have made no real progress toward goodness, I shall reprove you for neglecting what is of supreme importance and giving his attention to trivialities. I shall do this to everyone that I meet, young or old, foreigner or fellow-citizen, but especially to you my fellow-citizens.”  

He goes on and on. It’s beautiful, it’s beautiful.  Here is a 70-year-old man, defending himself unto certain death, saying, “You know what guys, I’m not backing down.  I’m going to practice philosophy.”  Watch how far he goes with his statement. So, to conclude, I’m jumping a bit ahead here. 

“I would say you can please yourselves, whether you listen to my accuser or not, or whether you acquit me or not.  You know I am not going to alter my conduct, even if I have to die 100 deaths.”  

Gandhi.  MLK, Jr.  A hundred deaths.  One deep breath.  I was practicing yoga this morning with my wife. Go to that quiet place.  

End of preliminary remark concerning the student’s own self-understanding and achievement of itself.  How many times did I say that?   But I think I got that in there, I think I got that through.  I got to, I got to, I got to.  Have you ever heard it before?  Have you ever heard it before?  Oh, I thought this world had everything, I thought they were selling everything.  Oh, everything, yeah.  As far as ointments and titillation, but how about enlightenment and self-understanding and truth or freedom? Maybe these are more important, right?

So as they go about, like the forces, whoever those forces may be who inhibit, prohibit, repress, deceive, seduce, distract and short us from our own true birthright as human beings, both male and female.  You know what I say to them?  “Thanks a lot guys,” to those deceivers who would try to confuse me from my quest for my own discovery of my soul.  

Next, let’s turn from what is most proximal – proximal meaning close to us – to other things that perhaps seem very distant, like Plato and ancient times, and the ancient Greek work, and our fundamental investigation into the foundation of social and political reality. Note, however, that we have a couple tools to use.  I call this the pedagogical, philosophical toolkit.  You already saw, this is my toolkit. This represents chronology, timeline, large gazing – the bird perched aloft, gazing out over the centuries.  Thank you, tools, for helping me, but I know that without them I would still be thinking.  We’re zooming in.  Thank you, tool, but at the same time I am so glad that I have an initial act of understanding and seeing, that you can help me.  

Some other elements of our toolkit.  We’ll look at these again and again.  If we do a good excavation of the beginning and we look at Plato and excavate Plato well, in a sense, this would also apply for each philosopher who we would continue to see after that.  Kant, or Hume, or Locke, or Franklin.  You see.  So if we get our foundation straight here, we’ll be okay.  I won’t have to go on about this all the time, but it is very, very, very important to get this.  In our toolkit, what are our tools?  

Definitions.   True definition, not just any definition.  This is the most important thing.  Socrates said, “I am the watchdog of language.”  I told my students in critical thinking last year that my dog is a Rottweiler, it’s not a lap dog.  He is tugging. So if I hear somebody lie to me, my Rottweiler comes out.  Sorry, I can’t help it.  A watchdog for the truth.  For good, true definitions.  When I hear politicians speak, I hear every single word they say, a lie.  Every definition they use, a lie.  Everything they say.  An operational definition because they have a verbal intelligence that makes them a bit smarter than their listener. Therefore they are able to rhetorically trick, seduce in a sophistic manner their audiences.  Not me.  They may trick me, Pete Wolf, but they’re not tricking that Rottweiler.  And they don’t get that lap dog.  You see, with a lap dog, if you have a lap dog, they just say, “Here lap dog,” and give him a little puppy tranquilizer and make him feel okay.  “Oh, we’ll take care of you. We’ll help you and give you support with aid and so forth.” All kinds of “care” from the government---yeah right!

Another element of definition is etymology.  Key words.  You see how I love words and how these words give us power when we understand what they really mean.  Like analog or the French term accoutrement.  But even more so when we get into looking at some Greek terms that are very important to us.  Also biography of our philosophers are important to some extent, but we are not overly swayed by biographies.  We are really interested in the essential thing they are thinking.   What did Aquinus say about Aristotle?  I don’t care so much what Aristotle says, but what I want to know is what Aristotle is saying about the truth, is it real, does it make sense?  That’s what I’m concerned about. The matter of the thought, not the authority of the man or the woman.  Those are all ad hominem character attacks.  You could attack anyone you want – Socrates, right – but that doesn’t stop the matter from being thought. A work such as this in our text where we see, this is another tool that we have.  It’s our anthology from Veltman which gives us a kind of complex way of doing it the modern way.  We take chunks out of the original text of The Republic.  Here is the copy that I have been working with.  This is my teaching copy of The Republic translated by Cornford.  So, here we have a whole beautiful book. But even this – and the book would originally have been parchments, rolls, all rolled up, ten books.  Can you imagine that?  And how did these books get the whole way across those middle ages?  All the fires and pestilences, you see, and destructions of libraries.  Again, amazing transmission of this intelligence and understanding.  

Distance is brought near. All these problems of translation, all these problems that are called hermeneutical problems, problems of interpreting, problems of understanding, problems of translation. All of these hermeneutical problems – there’s a key word from the Greek verb ‘hermeneuein’, to understand.  Hermeneutical.  And when I introduce a new term, I call this lexicon.  The lexicon is our collection, our little bundle of fresh new words that are power words like hermeneutical.  The most important word in the university, hermeneutical.  

Where are the courses in hermeneutics?  Your guess is as good as mine.  The most important thing, you would think there might be a couple courses out there.  I’m like, “Here’s my thing.”  Plato talks about getting the philosophers to be kings or rulers or presidents of university or whatever.  I would be happy if we just got some teaching positions. [laughter]  I would be happy if the philosophers got a few more teaching positions!  How about everybody in the university should be trained in this first of all, at least as an opening.  Giving me one-week crash course camp in philosophy, and I’ll get all the incoming freshman booted up for whatever course of action you want to take.  But first of all we have got to enact your thinking and your understanding and your self-understanding.  They forgot that.  Pedagogy, right, the modern educational theory. The modern education department has forgotten what these things are.  

Plato, too, shared in the miracle of human understanding though his concrete and actual circumstances differed from ours, both temporally and spatially.  Athens, when he wrote The Republic about 380 BC, very different.  Yes, this does pose a great challenge to our understanding of Plato and his work.  As I said, it has to require a good translation.  We have to have all these books which have come down through the ages to us.  Yet, one notices that practice makes perfect.  And with repeated study of our text, this text, our understanding then grows like a small plant and then gets stronger the more we continuously study and understand.  This we call learning.  Now you know what learning is.  Learning that doesn’t have a degree of self-understanding involved in it is not learning. It’s like this.  I take learning and I say, “This is learning.  All these facts here.”  And I take it with Alejandro and I just say, “Look here.  You just get all this stuff down and crunch it, and I’ll give you a test.  And you can spit it out, and I’ll give you a grade.  And that will determine your position in society.”  Not learning, not learning, it’s not learning! 

I want to make an even bolder assertion now concerning our own contemporary self-understanding of our peers and the world that concentrically surrounds us.  Remember the present within the sea of presence. The concentric, how our own present now, there are so many presents happening concentrically and surrounding us immediately.   When I consider my students, for example, where is Bernardo?  I said, “He better be here,” because I put him in the lecture here.  Well, Bernardo, this is Thursday and I’m turning back the time.  Bernardo, where are you from?  Venezuela, where?  The capital.  What’s the capital of Venezuela?  Caracas.  So you think that because he grew up in Venezuela, and I can use this now, because you’ll understand this as well with Bernardo or another student, I see that you are distant to my understanding, not in the way that Plato was because he is 2500 years, but because spatially you grew up in a very distant place from me.  I have never been there.  I’ve never been to Venezuela.  I’ve never been to South America for that matter.  So the world you grew up and its culture is not my own and owing to geographical spatial differences.  

Now take another student, Deontay.  You said you grew up in State College.  Is that right or did I interpret it that way?  Ok, thank you.  Now, did you know that I’ve been coming to State College since I was a kid, and I studied here and I’ve been teaching here for quite a while? So we don’t have this huge geographical distance like I did with Bernardo in Caracas, yet I never met you until last Thursday.  We never met.  So in some odd way, up till now, I have known Plato better than I have known Deontay.  Isn’t that strange?  How odd.  

Please take a moment to digest this consideration.  It is most valuable.  Do not fret or think that reflecting as we do in silence is a waste of time. It is not.  And it’s not useless, this reflection, this self-examination, this questing for authentic self-knowledge.  It’s precisely what we have been tasked to do by the authority of this university, to come to know ourselves and our soul, in the year of 2017 in the land of plenty, in Year One of the Trump reign.  Did you know that 100 years ago was Year One in the Soviet Union?  The revolution of 1917.  One hundred years in the past.  The Year One was achieved and declared thanks to Lenin’s revolution.  We are tasked here with the practice of philosophy, to wonder and contemplate, to search for truth.  

So this is for real.  Let’s do our best.  Let’s bring our A game to class.  Never stop giving thanks for this amazing opportunity which awaits us and upon which we are already embarked.