THE PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD: Third Lecture (1-24-17 PSU)

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

This is not only the title of today’s lecture, but it is the title of the course.  So I think this is a very important lecture.  In fact, I have written a song.  Where is my other accoutrement.  I’ve got a musical accoutrement today.  

[Harmonica riff, applause] 

Give it up.  Here we go guys.  Now I got the song mostly written.  I started writing on a piano, and actually realized I should write it on a guitar. So I wrote it on a guitar, and here’s how it goes:

Perfectly good hour, perfectly good day,

Searching for truth in the gutter, 

Some people prefer things that way.

Searchin’ all day for something to find,

Rolling back the cobwebs in the corners of my mind.

Stockpiling memories and provisions for food,

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

But hungry man wait long time before cook goose fall on empty plate,

I could get a new app to improve the chances of my fate,

But I don’t have that long to wait.

The Grim Reaper reaps as he should,

Perfect is the enemy of the good.  

Perfectly narrow, perfectly strong,

We can restructure the genome, it won’t take that long.

Perfectly punctual, perfectly wrong,

Perfect illusions of a perfect mind

In the political economy.  

Advanced directives, you better make up your mind.

The world keeps time, there’s no looking behind. 

Would, should, could, should, could or would;

The perfect is the enemy of the good.  

Destiny is an individually mapped-out fate.

You’re looking for eternity, but it can wait.

Give the Devil his due, he stands at your gate.

He promises you tomorrow but  now it’s too late.

Political correctness is just another form of hate.

And angels scorn man if from the narrow path he should deviate.

Paterno said, “Maybe I didn’t do as much as I could.”

The perfect is the enemy of the good.  

How about that, guys?  Yeah.  Poetry, live poetry, original and fresh, because I just wrote the thing.  I was working on it a while to get it right, tinker those rhymes.  

We should be sufficiently present to begin today’s lecture.  What are we going to look for?  Let me give you a preview of what’s coming.  We are going to zoom in today, we are going to use the timeline as a tool.  We are going to look at the transformation of the idea of the good from the philosophy of Socrates through to Plato and through to Aristotle. That is the terrain that we are going to cover today and attempt to face.  The title of today’s lecture is “The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good.”  My goal is to look at the manner in which the term “good” was concretely grasped and understood during the anthropological and systematic periods of ancient Greece from  Socrates to Aristotle.  

Now, I will use the chalkboard here.  We have the three periods of philosophy according to Windelband of ancient Greek philosophy.  Cosmological 600-450 BC.  Anthropological (and this is where we will be zooming in today in the systematic).  This is a briefer period, 450-400 BC characterized by the rise of Socrates, the Sophists and Socrates.  And the Systematic Period (Plato and Aristotle) 400 to the death of Aristotle 322  BC.  I will leave time today for questions, so if you do have questions, we will have a question-and-answer session after the lecture.  Windelband also gives us Democritus in that period, but we won’t be talking about Democritus.  

Today we will discover that something unique occurred in the 4^th and 5^th centuries BC in Athens in Greece, something very unique.  At the core of this stands the philosophical trinity, if you will:   Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.  The philosophical trinity, if you will.  Or if you prefer a term, to borrow a phrase from horse racing, the trifecta.  I don’t think you can cite another power punch quite as equal to it throughout history.  There are a few others that might be close, where you see the greatness of teaching and the elevation of thought as it existed in this brief period as Socrates teaches Plato and as Plato teaches Aristotle, in that direct succession.  Aristotle never met Socrates, but he was able to study with Plato who certainly had studied quite a long time and absorbed a lot of the thoughts and techniques and the methods of the master, Socrates.  

Now, who is Socrates?  If you want to know, you used to see the bracelets “WWJD – What would Jesus do?, which is a wonderful question.  But I like to say for philosophers, “WWSD - What would Socrates do?”  If you want to know what philosophy is, look to Socrates.  If you want to know what philosophy is, look to Socrates. 

Now let me site another couple of parallels that just came to my mind of similar moments of brilliant teacher-student relationship that may be parallel.  But I don’t think you could talk to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, although there may be one I am not aware of.  But I’m thinking of Franklin and Jefferson as being another unique node or moment in history where you have this kind of powerful synergy of minds. St. Paul and the disciples.  Can you imagine what it was like the day that  St. Paul met St. Peter?  What an amazing day that must have been.  Paul actually had to sit at the feet of Peter.   The unlearned fisherman.  Paul was the most learned man of his time, but he sat at the feet of Peter.  You’ve got another example, maybe Lennon and McCartney.  Right, there’s a synergy, there’s a magic.  Something happens between two or three people.  Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, Lennon/McCartney, Franklin/Jefferson, Lenin/Trotsky, for good or woe.  

Now we have already noted in the opening lectures, and, indeed, I’ll say lectures, and in last week the lecture called “Going for the One.”  We have noted the very same dynamics of human understanding are enacted and brought to life whenever there is an awareness of one’s own self-understanding and that when this occurs, it is miraculous and is referred to as a fusion of horizons.  Here is a modern 20^th century expression, a fusion of horizons, that comes from Gordimer.  Authentic understanding is achieved, which obliterates temporal and spatial alienation.  All that distance is gone.  We have seen that as I have read these passage from Plato.  The time is gone.  The spatial difference is gone.  We have a fusion of horizons. We have a uniquely concretely, actually-grasped experience of understanding.  Here and now.  

This authentic understanding is being achieved even now, as we speak, for those to have ears to allow it to be.  And it obliterates the temporal and spatial alienation of any other form of cultural alienation such that real thinking, real thinking, breathes life into these ancient philosophers’ quest for truth.  Recall that the miracle of understanding is more on our side than on their side. Reflect upon that. That is our treasure. Therein lies our treasure. The miracle of understanding is more on our side than on their side.  Paradox perhaps.  Ironically, no matter how feeble our efforts may be as beginning philosophers, beginning in this quest; no matter how feeble, nonetheless, as long as I stand and draw breath, I am head and shoulders beyond any social and political philosopher who is dead by merit of the fact that I’m still standing and that their mouths are stopped with dust, as unfortunate as that may be.  It’s part of that.

Real game.  Only one during the game. The real ball, carrying the ball, the quarterback today.  It’s real time.  Or in the recording studio. The light is on.  You are recording.  It’s taping. That’s us.  All of those who have gone before us, save one, their mouths are now stopped with dust.  It’s a cause for self-esteem.  So even how feeble our attempts may be, still we are the ones who carry the torch in this generation.  

The reason for this seeming paradox is that – here it is – thought is a living thing.  Thought is not a dead thing, cannot be dead, cannot be reduced to materialistic substrates of death.  Inert, static – no.  Thought, true thought, real thought, thinking, is this, going with life. Dead thought is an oxymoron.  Two terms that don’t suit together well like a tiny elephant or a huge mouse or a sober wedding.  Misnomer, bad epithet.  

Thinking is for those who live, not for those who have fallen to six feel under.  The full measure and profundity of this realization is enormous, and it should be taken as the single most significant research of our time.  It should be.  But as we have seen and I have touched on, our times do not lend themselves to authentic thinking of philosophy.  It doesn’t mean we aren’t being engaged in it; it is just our times aren’t helping us very much.  Or maybe they are.  Maybe the very desert quality of thinking and true thought and real beauty and authenticity of our time, the desert that exists here in this culture.  Maybe that is the real treasure and wake-up call for philosophy.  It has always been a rare thing.  It’s like the yeast.  Just a tiny, little bit, and it helps the whole loaf to be cooked full.  

But we live in a period of so-called artificial intelligence – dead thought.  Silicon is not living.  We live in a period of dead, artificial intelligence, global warfare, hypermaterialistic global expansion of capital markets, and an almost perfect forgetfulness of anything and everything sacred.  Welcome to the times we live in, the 21^st century.  Almost a complete and total forgetfulness – almost even more than that.  Not only a forgetfulness but denial of anything sacred.  

Now, we’re not really interested in Socrates, Plato or Aristotle just because they are historical names or for their authority of who they were. We are not interested in their philosophy for that reason.  We’re interested in their thought and philosophy insofar as it assists us in gaining the truth.  That’s why we study philosophy.  Not to enshrine dead philosophers, but it is rather to see that it is that they help us, assist us on our most important trajectory of our own authentic and real, living thought here today.  Because we want to think along.  We discovered what maybe their thought may reveal.  It jump-starts us.  It gets us thinking.  It’s the catalyst.  We are already potentially engaged in the truth, and this jump-starts it.  It catalyzes it and gets us full-blown into the actualization of thought.  Hence, this course.  

We acknowledge that this quest is the single most important undertaking a human being may embark upon.  There is no more important.  It is not becoming a CEO.  It is not becoming a general in the Army or the governor of New Jersey.  This, indeed, is the most important task.  

Now let’s zoom in, having made these preliminary remarks.  Let’s zoom in and take a detailed look at the philosophical trinity.  We open up our philosophical tool kit, and we’re going to pull out our philosophical timeline.  Here we see the three periods of ancient Greek philosophy according to Windelband, the cosmological, anthropological and systemic.  And I think we should have a minimal sense of it.  Now you see it is just so difficult. There is so much material that could be presented in a lecture.  My difficulty, the difficulty for me is to choose what can I select in this very, very brief period that we have together, 16 weeks.

Now we are going to go in for a detailed look at the figure of Socrates.  Cicero, in The Tusculan Disputations, tells us that “Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and set her in the cities of men and bring her also in the houses and compel her to ask questions about life and morality and things good and evil.”   Just note that there was just a wonderful quote there from Cicero stating that Socrates drew down philosophy from the heavens.  What is he referring to?  The cosmological philosophers. He is saying the tendency to look to cosmology, which preoccupied the first Athenian philosophers and Greek philosophers here and Ionian philosophers, was by Socrates brought from the heavens.  You will hear the same, almost identical quote from the native Ben Franklin.  

Socrates studies with a cosmological philosopher from this period called Anaxagoras, who referred to the word mind and thinking, that this was the fundamental substratum.  Remember that all of these cosmological philosophers were kind of asking a question, the pre-Socratic question; the question, “How is it that something comes to be, stands there, and passes away?”  The question of the phenomenon.  And guess what?  All is phenomenon, all-thing phenomenon, table phenomenon, snowflake phenomenon, quasar phenomenon, ocean phenomenon, fish phenomenon, moon phenomenon, human phenomenon.  All being comes in the form of phenomenal being manifested, that is coming to be, standing there and passing away.  So how does it come to be that all of this cosmos comes to be?  Anaxagoras says, “All mind.”  Remember Thales says water, but Anaxagoras – and this looks like an improvement – mind looks like, wait, mind; yeah, this sort of makes sense. This seems like an improvement over water or fire.  And that’s what Socrates thought.  Here’s what Socrates said:  “Once I heard someone read as he said a book from Anaxagoras and saying that mind organizes and is the cause of everything, I was delighted to hear this.”  This is the young Socrates.  So, sure enough, he signs up to study with Anaxagoras, very excited about it.  But as he got to know Anaxagoras a little bit better, he found out that his philosophy, the mind had been reduced to a materialistic, elemental framework.  And it wasn’t the idea of the mind that actually Socrates was looking for.  In this next passage that I’ll read, he will tell you why he was disappointed and what it was that he was looking for.  

“I thought,” said Socrates, “if Anaxagoras’s  theory was right and the organized mind organized everything and arranged each thing, that it would be in the best possible condition.”  So if someone wanted to discover the cause of anything and what way it comes into being or perishes or is – notice the phenomenon comes into being, or perishes or is – it would be necessary to discover this namely in what way it’s best for it to be or do or suffer anything.  On the basis of this argument, it is appropriate for a human being, when investigating anything, to investigate nothing other than what is excellent or best, what is excellent or best.  And we’re really going to see how this word plays itself out in the thinking of Socrates and Plate and Aristotle and emerges and transforms itself.  This is the Greek word artay, the key term. A couple of key terms today in our lexicon, certainly artay, excellence.  They actually also mean function.  And we come back to this word telos.  

So Socrates hoped that Anaxagoras’s theory of mind would show how all things should be ordained and arranged by the mind for the best. For human affairs, we see it in nature to a great extent. We can kind of see how things are arranged for the best.  Except when there are things like tsunamis and comets hit the planet, things like that.  What is for the best?  But we kind of also see the captain at the head of a government or at the head of a ship thinking, “What is this activity of this leader for?”  Well it’s to bring things to the best, to bring things to the best. That’s why we purportedly should have government or anything like that.  What is best.  But he did not find this in Anaxagoras, so he was very disappointed. He left behind then this philosophy, and in that move of leaving behind this philosophy, in a sense that is why Windelband finds this next period.  There is something that he brings, and the quote, too, from Cicero, that he brought philosophy down from heaven, and he brought it down to looking at the home economy, what’s good for the city-state, what is virtue.  

Artay.  Artay means excellence.  Artay means function. Artay means virtue.  See, Greek is a richer language, so it’s term has a much broader reach than our term.  English is a language that was made for businessmen.  That’s what they told me in Belgium.  That English is probably the worst possible language to philosophize in.  Greek is the best.  Greek and German, that was Heidegger’s idea.  We can philosophize in English, but we just have to “ar, ar, ar, ar;” it’s a brutal language.  English is a businessman’s language. 

We’re looking for subtle, refined things – beauty, discussions of subtleties, nuances, right.  Hypersensitive estheticism, esthetics.  Not an American thing.  And the British were just ruthless. 

Philosophy changes when you change the language. We’re going to see what happens when you take Greek thought and put it into the Roman mind. It gets static, cut off.    The word phenomena turns into the word nature.  Nature is a kind of a flat word.  The Greek idea would be “the coming to be of the snow, this is amazing.”  “Look at nature.”  Notice the difference when I say, “Look at nature.”  It’s almost dead.  There is no nature.  There is the coming to be and passing away and standing there of all things. This isn’t nature.  This is just a wonderful hemlock tree, and this and the snow.  And this is far more than I can ever mention. And we take one word and try to poke it all together and say that’s nature.  That’s pathetic. Or the environment, that’s even worse. Life itself is the coming to be and passing away.  The frogs and the worms and everything, including ourselves.  Thank goodness we’re here to cap it off. We are the cappers-off of nature.  We are the ones who finish the job through our perception of it and grasping of it. We finish the job.  

Here are the most salient biographical details that have come down to us about this man Socrates. Born to be a citizen of Athens 470 AD. Some people say 469.  He later married Xanthippe.  I want to make a trilogy in Hollywood, big blockbuster. Start out with the trinity, Socrates; but really focus on Xanthippe.  Nobody would have ever thought of that, right?  The wife of Socrates. And who would I cast as her?  Jennifer Aniston.  I’m not sure about Socrates.  I’m thinking Richard Dreyfus.  You think about it.  If you wanted to cast somebody, who would you put in there, in this great film.   Why didn’t they make a film like this already. They’re making all these films. Come on, Plato, Aristotle. Come on, these are blockbusters.  Huh? He had three children.  I wonder what they were like.  Did they become philosophical?  I don’t know.  I have never seen any historical record of that.  He was described as a thick and burly man with a snub nose.  He did not necessarily, wasn’t the most handsome guy in the world.  They said that when he spoke to you, it had the impact of being stung by a jellyfish or a stingray.  Some people say it’s like that with me before I get my cup of tea in the morning.  You just got stung.  He undertook a study of philosophy as a young man with the cosmological philosopher Anaxagoras, yet Socrates became disenchanted with the study of mind when it did not connote what he thought mind would be, for the best. It turned out that he was talking about mind.  I don’t know.  Maybe we could say that Anaxagoras was a proto-neuroscientist. He was saying the mind, what I mean is breaking it down into neurons and some sort of elemental materialistic component of how the brain works. That’s no good. Socrates says, “Wait a second. That’s not going to help us.”  Taking the mind and simplifying it into elements is not what we’re after. The mind, what we’re after, is how it might be for the better, for the good, for the excellent.  He turned his gaze down upon the reality of human existence.  He practiced philosophical anthropology.  And hence, we have this term anthropological.  Anthropology, the study of the human being.  Socrates initiates the study of philosophical anthropology. The subject matter is no longer cosmology, but the subject matter becomes the human being himself, herself.    

Philosophical anthropology may be defined as the quest for the truth concerning man as man.  Don’t tell me.  I ask you, “What’s the truth about man?”  Oh, man is made up of a cellular entity.  No, wrong.   What is the truth about man?  Man is evolved from an ape.  Wrong.  What’s the truth about man?  You see, these reductionists’ tendencies – no, we want to know the truth about man as man.  Human being qua human being.  Not man as spirit or divinity.  And certainly not man as material or biological artifact.  But man qua man.  This question, incidentally, is of the utmost significance to all of the social and political philosophy which we shall be looking at and excavating in this course.  And it remains for us the most important matter to be thought, even today.  Especially today.  

Who shall speak on behalf of man.  The technologists?  God forbid.  The economists?  God forbid.  Medical doctors?   God forbid.  Who speaks on behalf of man.  Politicians, communists?   What about the philosophers?  Aristotle also tells us that in the time of Socrates, this concern with essence and definition grew, but investigation into nature stopped, and philosophers turned to a study of practical virtue and politics.   So this is really our charter. This is our beginning point, the anthropological period for studying this phenomenon.  Turning philosophy to the study of practical virtue and politics.  

Now that the stage has been set, let’s consider step-by-step how the inquiry concerning man and the good for man – notice the transformation there, the insinuation the study of man and the good for man.  You want to know what the study of man is?   When we asked the question, we were stuck.  Remember I said all these potential candidates – the technologists, the politicians – all want to speak on behalf of man. But the correct question is a question of virtue.  What is best, a question of artay, a question of telos.  And we’ll be getting to this.  What is man for?  What is the good for man?  So let’s consider the step-by-step inquiry concerning the good for man, developed and changed within the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.  A crucial term is added to our lexicon, and that is virtue, artay, excellence, function.  

Socrates seems to be the first philosopher who sought after definitions of moral virtue.  This is the crux of the anthropological turn during the period 450-400 BC.  Socrates seems to be the first philosopher who sought for a definition of moral virtue.  This indeed is the crux of the anthropological turn which occurred during the period of 450-400 BC.  Socrates employed and refined a method of investigation called the Socratic method.  What’s the real push there, the crux?  The Socratic method aims at producing the best, optimal or true definition of a moral virtue such as prudence or justice or courage.  

Let’s take a term that is simple to define. A hat. A hat may be defined as what covers a head.  A woolen covering for the head.  But this would not apply to a helmet or paper hat.  Just think of the many ways a hat may be – the cap, the polo cap.  And hence find inclusion in the adequate definition.  We’re trying to find the adequate definition, the true definition, the best and optimal of hat which would therefore accurately identify any member of that class, any member of that group, what would count as a hat. Good, honest and true definition.  Is a crown a hat?   So the Socratic method, you begin with a definition. And you can begin sort of proximally by saying let’s just start with a simple thing like the hat.  I’m using that as an example to kind of get us into this way of looking at things.  Now, we find, as I stated there, there are anomalies.  There are points that, if I were to define it too narrowly, I would rule out things that counted as hat.  If I were to define it too broadly, I would not be able to identify hat from other functions of other things in definition.  So we need to get that definition right.  The Socratic method starts by bringing in a dialog, a discussion – Let’s talk about it.  He may say, “Let’s talk about what you think the hat is.” Then he is going to come up and, “You say a hat must be a covering from the head that could be woolen.”  Well, he says, “Wait, I’ll find problems with that.”  This is the Socratic method.  We search for definition.  We take candidates, taken from the vernacular from ordinary, every-day speech, and then we go through them and winnow them out and tweak them until we find a proper definition. This is the Socratic method.  And I’ve really boiled it down to it’s very simple core.  What about a yamulke or skull cap?  You see, we could go on step by step, methodically investigating the definition of a thing such as hat and tweak and refine this definition.  What we’re going to see is that this process that Socrates began is going to be enriched and transformed through Plato until it is brought full-blown into Aristotle’s philosophy. This is the seed that grows into this majestic thing which is Aristotle’s taxonomy of genus and species, which really lays the foundation for the thinking of the next several millennia.  This is really where you see some form of scientific thinking that is classification.  This taxonomy.  

But first of all, in Socrates, it just begins as a kind of quotidian thing, nothing written down, no books.  Just talking on the street, trying to find.  Do you really think that this is going to be the best approach to running our government today?  What do you mean by best?  Well, let’s try to define what we mean by best.  And then we start winnowing out and tweaking and clarifying and trying to get to a more adequate definition.  This is the Socratic method, in short.  But by the time the seed of the Socratic method, the searching for definition, by the time it gets developed by the philosophical trinity and it comes into the systematic period, especially coming through Plato, the brilliant teacher and artist, to Aristotle, then we have the full-grown plant.  Aristotle’s taxonomy of genus and species, penetration of all entities that can be perceived and named within the cosmos.  Note that the kind of systematic inquiry into classifying all sorts of phenomena which Aristotle’s philosophy presents – and you’ll see an example of that Politics Book 2– notice there, he says, “Well, let’s start and look at all the particular constitutions that have already been out there.”  The existing constitutions.  Now let’s classify them.  We’ll say some of them look to be oligarchic, some look to be democratic, and some look to be tyrannical.  He’s classifying them.  And he does that with everything.  He does it with a starfish and the platypus.  And he does this with the leaves of grass and the birds and the taxonomies.  We’re still doing that.  So, in Politics Book 2, Aristotle classifies, investigates these different types of political constitutions in an attempt to classify them, this kind of effort, which is Aristotle’s dialectic – another million dollar word, but I’m going to hold off on defining it yet because it transforms.  It means one thing in the philosophy.  Dialectic means something different in every single philosopher we undertake, we look at.  It certainly means something different in Plato than it did in  Socrates.  And it certainly means something different in Aristotle than it did in Plato.  It is a term that will have great significance in the 19^th century, will be resurrected again and have enormous consequences in social and political philosophy, as we will see. The dialectic.  Mostly through Hegel.  Karl Marx, the philosophy of Communism. The modus operandi, how you get Communism done.  Dialectical materialism.  Another approach, I’ve seen this usage currently in describing crises.  How modern day politicians will use crises to bring a thesis to its opposition so they can bring forth a solution.  You want to get to the solution of an invasion of a certain county, but you can’t just come out and say, “We’re going to do that. We’re just going to invade that country.”  So we need a proximal cause. This will be called the antithesis.  We start with a thesis. We negate it, and here comes our synthesis.  This is a very rough way of describing it for now, but let that be.  We will refine it as we go. 

We can see the seed of Socratic method grown in full and mature in Aristotle’s systematic philosophy.  Aristotle states in his Politics, and I’m quoting from page 43 that’s in Volkmann:

“Observation shows us 

[and after I’ve read this little passage here, I would like to go back and look at Plato and look at the different style in which The Republic was written for which Politics was written and look at the style of Socrates’ writing, which there wasn’t any because he didn’t write anything.  No, no written documents.  But we’ll touch on that in a minute.  Aristotle states in his Politics; notice where he begins – observation.  Direct, immediate, experiential observation.  The same as us.] 

first that every city is a species of association;    

[Notice he uses the word species there, too. He is already classifying taxonomically.  The word taxonomy I haven’t written up here yet.  It’s the system of classifications. Politics Chapter 2] 

a particular manifestation, a species, a particular individual manifestation of association.  Secondly, that all associations come into the being for the sake of some good.  For all men do all their acts 

[women, too] 

with a view to achieving something which is in their view a good.”

[This is the word telos.]  

What I said about artay, it has the meaning of the word.  It also means end of goal.  Telos good and goal.  Translated back, ”For all men do all their acts with a view toward achieving something which is, in their view, a good.”  Socrates, had he been living, would have been rejoicing because he would have known that what Aristotle describes there was the kind of good that was referred to  he was looking for. When Socrates said that “I was one to discover what may be best for the thing.”  Not to analyze it and tell me that it’s made up of molecules or quanta. That doesn’t help me at  all.  Thanks a lot, all you scientific departments.  Your stuff is great.  You’re spending trillions of dollars. But, sorry, you just can’t touch this question.  What is the good for man?  Is some sort of science going to tell us that? Is some sort of artificial thing, technological going to tell us that?  Is something coming up in the future going to finally reveal to us what man is for, so we can just wait for that glorious day?  

Aristotle helps us out a lot by saying, “Hey, we don’t have to refer to these alien discourses.  This good is something that is already embedded and self-evident in a quite simple way.”  He talks about it in his ethics, Aristotle does.  The telos.  I’ll give you another example, something simpler.  Here’s another meaning of telos – function.  What’s a good harmonica?  It’s one that plays well.  There’s your telos.  The good is our function.  What’s the function of a good flute?  It plays well. What’s the function of a pencil?  If the pencil’s freaking broken, it’s not a good pencil.  What’s the function of a flute?  Well, it plays well.  What’s the function of a good guitar?  It plays well. What’s the function of a good car?  It drives, it functions well.  Okay.  Million dollar question – what is the function of a human being?  So to ask the question what a thing is and what its good is and what its telos is is to look to this question.   What is the good?  Aristotle refines this question and says, “What is the telos?”  What is the good, what is the telos and what is the telos of man?  That’s what  Socrates was looking for that he didn’t find.  And Anaxagoras, this is the real marrow of what we’re looking for in terms of philosophical.  What is the telos of man?  What is man for – and woman?  What is the phenomenon aimed at.  There is another meaning of telos – aim and goal, function.  For Aristotle, all those words mean good.  What is the good?  It is the end, aim or function.  Just as a car is a good car because it drives well.  Just as a good harmonica is because it plays well.  What is that for man?  We have the quest to determine and to cut things short, Aristotle is going to conclude, he is going to show us that the thing that makes us really human being and the thing that is really the end and good for us is what we’re engaged in right now.  It’s what we are literally engaged in with our understanding.  It’s his act of understanding that is uniquely human that cannot be sub-delegated to any machines.  No, not in this century or any other century.  No, you can’t.  You can destroy the human being.  You could kill me, but he cannot take away the fundamental function of the human being – that act of understanding.  Therein lies our freedom and our political charter and everything else that is valuable.  

So Socrates was rightly disgusted with the pre-Socratic philosophy and said, “This doesn’t help me at all.”  And I look around today and say it is all pre-Socratic.  We got a bunch of cosmologists out there today, trying to tell us about big bang and things they don’t know anything about.  Astrophysics, cosmology.  You tell me what human beings are good for before we blow up the planet and destroy ourselves.  Could we try to figure out what the good for man is?  That could be the subtext of the whole course, Social and Political Philosophy.  Could we please stop a minute with all this racing ahead economy and that, and try to just for a second ponder what would be good for us.  

If I play a golf shot, I do no less.  When I play a golf shot, I say, “What would a good shot be?”  Yeah, I say a good shot would be one that gets me to the pin, and I plan and do so.  Show me someone who knows what’s good for man.  That’s the problem that Aristotle addresses in his ethics.  Is it pleasure?  Is it lust?  Having an orgy?  Getting really ripped?  How about having everything coated with gold?  Being so rich and wealthy?  How about being famous in entertainment?  Being some sort of star in Hollywood?  They said, “Dr. Wolf, we love your harmonica.  We want you on the show.”  So I go out to Hollywood. The next thing you know, there is a phenomenon on your hands.  They say, “You write songs, too?”  Sure I do, you know.  “We’re going to make you famous, entertainment, rich, too.  It’ll be good for you.”  I’m pretty happy as I am.  My own little frugal life and little rabbits, my wife.  We all live in Greenwood and come down here and teach at Penn State. I’m pretty good with that.  The perfect is the enemy of the good.  

Let’s go back to Plato for a second.  We kind of jumped from Socrates to Aristotle. We kind of skipped over Plato.  Now, one thing I want to state here is that there was an amazing transformation in writing down philosophy.  The means of communication.  And thanks to that, we are able to even talk about Plato.  Socrates, let’s look at this this way. The pre-Socratics – that is the cosmologists – what we possess of their writings, fragmentary, just fragments.  

How about Socrates.  I already said, he didn’t write anything down. But neither did Jesus.   Finally one piece of thing that Jesus wrote, He wrote in the sand one time with a stick.  Go find out what He wrote.  It was washed away.  The disciples wrote it down. That’s why we have it.  Plato decides to enshrine Socrates as his interlocutor and hero for 33 out of 36 dialogues.  Plato writes 36 dialogues; 33 out of 36 Socrates is the main hero.  It’s called the interlocutor.  Plato’s works are called dialogues.  Aristotle did write dialogues evidently, but they were lost to us in history.  The library at Alexandria was destroyed.  I think all the work in it was destroyed.  What we have thought, the innovation – and you already heard it when I read the quote; I’m going to read two quotes, one from Plato and one from Aristotle, and you’ll hear the difference.  He wrote treatises.  They were sometimes based on students’ notes.  The case of the ethics.  Treatises.  This Aristotelian way of writing is what you’re more familiar with.  When you read a text book today in the university, it’s written as a prosaic, univocal direct style.  Notice when we read The Republic, what did he do in The Republic?  He starts telling the Gyges ring.  He starts using metaphors.  He embodies justice, Socrates does, and he does this by way of analogy.  So the fundamental  method of demonstrating here is analogy in the platonic corpus of writings.  And here would we call it prose, a direct naming of things, which is really this kind of way of thinking, you will see that as soon as you come to Aristotle, you have a feeling of “He’s a contemporary.”  This is the way our scientific treatises are written today as well.  It’s the same sort of thing.  How did it come about?  All at once, in the mind of Aristotle.

So we’re looking here at writing genres, types of written things.  Fragments, nothing (for Socrates), dialogues which are dramatic.  Let’s go back and look at an excerpt from The Republic, different passages that were not in your book.  “Yes, my friend.”  [Notice the dialogue.  They’re talking back and forth.  You asked me a questions. There’s always a question that leads up to it.  And then Socrates says,] “Can we live together most of the time in pure air?  Yes, my friend. For the truth is that you can have a well-governed society only if you discover for further rulers a better way of life than being in office.”  Remember I said earlier about going to Hollywood, and they made all those offers to me to come to Nashville, New York City, London?  “Discover for future people a better way of life.”  But here he just says that.  I’m interpolating. “Discover for your future rulers a better way of life than being in office.  Then only will power be in the hands of men who are rich, not in gold, but in wealth that brings happiness.”  The rabbit farm, my wife, my  humble life as a teacher.  Happiness.  Maybe in Pennsylvania. Good enough.  I don’t need to see the Alps.  I’ve been there, done that.  

Wealth that brings happiness, a good and a wise life.  Practice philosophy, no other way, no other way.  All goes wrong when starved for lack of anything good in their lives.  They got wealth, but they’re starved for good. That is wisdom, that is philosophy. They’ve got fame, but they’re starved for good. They have power, but they’re starved for good. That is philosophy.  So they set about fighting for power, and they think that they will be able to snatch it politically and then they will be able to gain happiness.  “I’ll get happy once I get to rule. Then I can rule, and I’ll be happy.”  All goes wrong when starved for lack of anything good in their own life, men turn to public affairs, hoping to snatch from thence the happiness they hunger for. They set about fighting for power, and this internecine conflict ruins them and their country.  The life of true philosophy is the only one that looks down upon the offices of state.  The only one who looks down on the offices of state is the humble philosopher.  Access to power must be confined to men who are not in love with it, or women who are not in love with it.  You have never seen a deeper greater love for power then you have seen in the candidates last year in the presidential election.  Absolutely, unadulterated lust for power for those offices.  To be the one.  I need to be somebody important in this administration.  I’m not happy with myself. I can’t be happy because I’m just a decent human being who has the treasure and gift of my understanding.  I need to have a lot of other stuff, too.  See that’s a big mistake, big mistake.  

So whom else can you compel to undertake the guardianship of the commonwealth.  If not those who besides understanding best the principles of government, enjoy a nobler life than the politicians and look for rewards of a different kind.  There is indeed no other choice.  We’ve got to change our way of thinking.  We need to change our way of thinking.  Start looking at things in a new way. We have been highly deceived but only if we let ourselves be deceived. It is difficult not to be because you are being bombarded by all kinds of propaganda 24/7.  We can turn it off.  Socrates also says that really what philosophers are looking for in the world of knowledge, the last thing to be perceived, and only with great difficulty, is the essential form of goodness.  Without having had this vision of this form, no one can act with wisdom, either in his own life or in matters of state.   So in addition to looking at these transformation which I cannot account for, I just present to you as some sort of fundamental huge mystery, all the great things in history are mysterious.  We hear people talk about Franklin as if they knew him, as if they were there.  You weren’t there.  You don’t know anything. We just got these records that sort of make us feel that we’re secure, that we know something about the past.  You don’t even know what happened yesterday.  And if you did.  For example, Cornel West.  That was just a relatively not a huge crisis.  Well, you got some records of it. I saw a photograph, and I read you some quotes.  What about the richness of the being there, the presence, the understanding of all that was given.  Never been captured.  It’s never been captured in any histories.  It’s impoverished.  So in addition to these transformation through this period of the philosophical trinity, with its concomitant different uses of philosophy, some people argue that Plato – remember when we looked at The Seventh Letter, we said he was so disgusted because Socrates was the most beautiful, decent, honorable man that he had ever seen.  Plato was probably the most competent, qualified to lead but with disgust gave it up, said forget it.  

So what did he do?  He started this new genre.  He started this new, absolutely new, out of the blue. You’ve seen it in The Republic. That way of writing.  That way of transformed Socrates into an interlocutor in his dialogue and something magical happened.  Something magic for our understanding occurs with this dialogue. Dialogue, by the way, is the root, and the key word it’s related to is dialectic.  So we talk about Plato’s dialectic, we look to the dialogues, we look to that back and forth, question and answer Socratic method.  Are you sure?  Does it count as justice if the majority of the people are given what they deserve distributively?  Or are you going to winnow it, tweak it and try to find it?  This dialectical process is really the whole substance of what philosophy was about. That was what philosophy counted for. That’s what Socrates gave us.  But notice Socrates gets enshrined in the dialogues of Plato, and it allows him to – we’re still talking about him, we’re still talking about Socrates.  

Stanley Rosen said, “Philosophy in its essence is revolutionary.”  Any time we approach real philosophy, we’re approaching revolution.  And in the dialect, it gets even refined further in Aristotle and becomes basically a prosaic treatise, and these taxonomies which I said you would be familiar with because in the university, we are still kind of speaking in that genre, in that trope, in that way of thinking.  

I’ll take one more.  We’ve got this nice little parallel here.  It helps using the chalkboard. This is all analogy. The analog.  It helps us to understand somewhat.  Using these three, I am not going to discuss these, but the trinity of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.  What is the good?  For Socrates?  He’s going to go about by asking questions, defining moral virtue.  Show me in all the particular instances of it, how can we find a fundamental, authentically good grasp of it?  What is the good for Plato?  We saw here that this amazing excerpt, the final and last thing to be perceived, and only with great difficulty, in the world of knowledge is the essential form of goodness.  Some people might say he’s talking about God.  Get the good and get rid of one of those Os.  Then Aristotle gives us the good as telos, his fundamental critique of his master.  I’m a friend of Plato, but I am more a friend of truth.  The telos, what’s it good for?  That gives us a very concrete tool to investigate the good. 

Now, here we have hit pay dirt and we may now go about pulling in our oars on this lecture’s inquiry and coast a while.  Now, did I leave time for questions?  No.  Thursday, please read the passage on Aristotle, and I’ll email you in the ensuing time with a little bit of a focal point for that assignment.  That way we can do it together on Thursday.  Be well. Thank you.  

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.  

The Refutation of Machiavelli (materials from web)

excerpts:

DISCOURSES Upon The First Ten (Books) of Titus Livy To ZANOBI BUONDELMONTI AND TO COSIMO RUCELLAI By NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI 1517 NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI TO ZANOBI BUONDELMONTI AND TO COSIMO RUCELLAI

“...in having selected you, to whom above all other of my friends I address (dedicate) these Discourses; as much because in doing this it appears to me I have shown some gratitude for the benefits I have received, as well because it appears to me I have departed from the common usage of those writers, who usually (always) address (dedicate) their works to some Prince, and blinded by ambition and avarice laud him for all his virtuous qualities when they should be censuring him for all his shameful parts.” (But isn’t this precisely what Machiavelli does in the Prince?)

Final Paragraph:

And although these maladies in a Republic have a bad effect, they are not fatal, for there is always time to correct them; but there is no time for those that affect the State, which, if they are not corrected by a prudent man, ruin the City. Because of the liberality which the Romans showed in giving their civil privileges to foreigners, many new people sprung up in Rome, and these begun to have a part in the elections; so that the government began to change and depart from those institutions and principles of those men who had been accustomed to direct it. When Quintus Fabius, who was Censor, became aware of this, he put all the new people, from whom this disorder derived, into four Tribes, so that they should be unable ((reduced to such small a space)) to corrupt all Rome. This was well recognized by Fabius, and put into effect a suitable remedy, which without change, was so well accepted by the Society (Republic), that he merited being called Maximus. (Describe how this statement of Machiavelli parallels the situation in America in 2017 with regard to immigration policies.)

[Pardon the use of Blanko-pedias--I have bundled together some contemporary “reflections” on Machiavellianism from the WWW.]

Machiavellianism http://www.conservapedia.com/Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism in Psychology is defined as a manipulative strategy of social interaction and personality style that uses other people as tools to achieve for personal gain.[1] The LGBT movement has the Machiavellian character.[2]

In political science the term "Machiavellian" connotes cunning and deceit, the Prince (1532) - best known work of Machiavelli - is seen by many as the foundation of modern political science for four reasons:

• its stress on centralized government and bureaucracy
• its cynicism about character
• its opposition to the classical, affirmative view of Hebrew Scriptures and Plato
• its focus on success and efficiency as the supreme goals of government

Today it is often spoken in tone of admiration but Machiavelli's Florentine contemporaries were shocked by his views,[3] some in fact to such degree that they regarded his works to be inspired by devil.[4] We don't know if Machiavelli wrote the Prince as a satire on the way the princes of his day behaved or as serious advice. We do know that more than a few leaders have taken his advice seriously.[note 1] Whatever his objectives were, Machiavelli made his position clear: leaders are essentially selfish, self-interested, and self-protected; they view other people simply as objects to be manipulated. That's why from their perspective, virtuous character is not just irrelevant but also even obstructive and foolish. This is in sharp contrast to Plato who wrote in his Republic that characters of leaders[note 2] are extremely important for public welfare: "the States are as the men are; they grow out of human characters".[3] The contemporary society of Machiavelli's period based its morale on conviction that evil acts in temporal life will cause punishment in eternal life. He turned this perception upside down and refrained from mentioning Bible or Christianity in his writings. His ostentatious avoidance of addressing the question of the Last Judgement in this respect excited resentment.[4][note 3]

From the Prince:  “A prince has never lacked legitimate reasons to justify his breach of faith. ...But it is necessary to know how to disguise this nature well and how to pretend and dissemble. Men are so simple and so ready to follow the needs of the moment that the deceiver will always find someone to deceive. ...So a prince need not have all the aforementioned good qualities, but it is most essential that he appear to have them. Indeed, I should go so far as to say that having them and always practising them is harmful, while seeming to have them is useful. It is good to appear clement, trustworthy, human, religious, and honest, and also to be so, but always with the mind so disposed that, when the occasion arises not to be so, you can become the opposite. ... a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.”

Goebbels' maxim

Goebbels' maxim can be stated as: the bigger the lie (and more it is stated with absolute conviction) the more people are likely to believe it.[1][2]

Goebbels' maxim and Propagandists

Demagogues, dictators, and fanatical ideologists all try to convince audiences that their reasoning is logical and sound. In reality, they abuse logic, twist, slant, and distort the reasoning process in whatever ways they believe they can without detection. Some of these speakers believe that the bigger the misrepresentation they can get away with, the greater the triumph. Since propagandists have already made up their minds, they are not really searching for truth. Such people do not attempt to use logic in an honest search for truth, but only with the intent to deceive more effectively.[3]

Entry in Conservapedia http://www.conservapedia.com/Gleichschaltung

Gleichschaltung (meaning "coordination", "making the same", "bringing into line")[3] was the Nazi policy enforcing political conformity in all sectors of society, from the economy and trade associations to the media, culture and education.[4] It is an example from the early days of the Nazi dictatorship of developing its own twisted and distorted language[note 2] used to manipulate and confuse citizens of a totalitarian state so that they no longer can distinguish truth from falsehood. Consequently, they are reduced to such a state of confusion[note 3] and impotence that the dictatorial government can control their hearts and minds. George Orwell’s famous books 1984 and Animal Farm are the classic fictional and symbolic statements addressing this aspect of totalitarianism.[note 4] The Ministry of Propaganda established by Joseph Goebbels, best known for his media and social manipulation in Nazi Germany,[5] is used as model for the Ministry of Truth in the 1984 book.[6] Orwell reasoned that if a government could control all media and interpersonal communication while simultaneously forcing citizens to speak in politically controlled jargon, it could blunt independent thinking.[7] One of the key figures in the process of Gleichschaltung that established the Nazi dictatorship was Hermann Göring, who in 1933 banned all Roman Catholic newspapers in Germany.[8] When gleichschaltung is applied into the realms of science, it transforms science into scientism. The twisted scientific methods and self-serving research are then used to support particular political agenda of the party or pressure group having special interests.

"Deceit and deception, falsehood and hypocrisy. In the eyes of this world nothing is too mean - if it leads to achieving the objective. Honor, character, principles – they play no role whatsoever. One thing is being said, other is being thought.[note 1] ... One thing is being said, other is being done. The word is losing its value because in the dirty politics, people do not know conscience, honor and morality. Anything goes there - there we are able to make alliance even with the devil, and yet we do it under the guise of and in the name of humanity, peace and justice!"

— Jozef Ondrej Markuš[1]

Bible Gateway: John 18:33-38

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+18&version=KJV

33 Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?

34 Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?

35 Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?

36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.