Cratylus--Desire or Necessity?

Soc. I will tell you my own opinion; but first, I should like to ask you which chain does any animal feel to be the stronger? and which confines him more to the same spot—desire or necessity?

Socrates asks Hermogenes this leading question in Cratylus. When he starts with, “I will tell you my own opinion” it sounds as if Socrates is setting Hermogenes up. The modern reader is surprised when Socrates heartily agrees with Hermogenes’s answer, “desire.” Framing what might otherwise be a simple comparison and contrast question by asking which is the strongest chain rather than the strongest motivator might also sound strange, but the reason for that will come out later in the dialogue.

The modern reader is the only one who would be surprised by Hermogenes’s answer and Socrates’s agreement, since the power of desire, the strongest of all emotions, was a commonplace in Classical Athens. However, most readers immersed in analytical philosophy would not only understand the answer, but would nod their head in agreement. I should note that Plato does have a trick in store for his contemporary reader. Such trickery is common in the Socratic Dialogues, where Socrates is more likely to come off as a satyr than a philosopher, or in his own words a “gadfly” whose duty is to irritate Athens out of its complacency.

Socrates’s question and Hermogenes’s answer does have a surprising twist, since it is asked in the context of a discussion of Hades and how Hades got his name. Before we go on to that reason, I should note that prior to explaining Hades’s name, Socrates has made two conflicting arguments about the origins of names, first, that names were given by legislators, and thus had the power of laws, of fixing the identity of whoever was so named; and second, that names evolve from the character and actions of those so named. Interestingly enough, Socrates argues that the names of men are fixed or given, and the names of gods and heroes evolve, a schema that disrupts popular notions of Platonic forms—cleverly setting his modern reader up..  

At question at this point, though never overtly stated, is why anyone would stay in Hell, what chains constrain them? In that context, Socrates argues a few lines later that Hades doesn’t physically bind those in Hell to the place, but convinces them to stay by playing on their desires. One desire, the one Socrates says is the strongest, is the desire to be a part of a community, a polis. He asks Hermogenes, “Is any desire stronger than the thought that you will be made better by associating with another?” Once again modern readers, with Judeo-Christian concepts of Hell, as well as less focused on communal association, find themselves shaking their head. One would be willing to stay in Hell because of the opportunity to associate with its ruler, or the other condemned? 

That modern reader might also miss the one advantage of Hell, or more precisely of death. With death, one is no longer imprisoned by a body, which is the seat of all emotions. Socrates argues that when “the soul is liberated from the desires and evils of the body,” the dead are actually in a “liberated state [and] he can bind them with the desire of virtue.”

At that moment in the dialogue, a discussion of names that is deceptively simple, and appears to be about using names as a vehicle to fix identity, thus making passage a de facto argument for Platonic Forms, uses Forms to identify what blocks virtue. Thus, Socrates (at least as much as he is Plato’s mouthpiece) is not arguing for forms as an alternative model for reality  to the Protagorean argument for “flux.” The only “inference,” to borrow one of Plato’s favorite words, is that Forms should be preferred over flux—for flux, a sister to desire, is a function of the body, and only by escaping the body’s changeable, emotional nature, can one truly begin the search for virtue, the prize of wisdom.

Monologue, Novalis

MONOLOGUE
Novalis,
Friedrich von Hardenberg.
From The Philosophical and Theoretical Works, pp. 438-439.

 

Matters concerning speech and writing are genuinely strange; proper conversation is a mere play of words. We can only marvel at the laughable error people make--believing that they speak about things. No one knows precisely what is peculiar to language, that it concerns itself merely with itself. For that reason, it is a wonderful and fertile mystery--that when someone speaks merely in order to speak, one precisely then expresses the most splendid and most original truths. Yet if one wishes to speak of something determinate, then temperamental language has them say the most laughable and perverse things. That is the reason too for the hatred that so many earnest people have toward language. They recognize their own willfulness, but do not observe that contemptible chatter is the infinitely earnest side of language. If only one could make people grasp that the case of language is similar to the case of mathematical formulae--they constitute a world for themselves-- they play with themselves alone, express nothing other than their wonderful nature, and precisely for that reason they are so expressive--precisely for that reason they mirror in themselves the curious play of relations in things. Only by way of freedom are they members of nature and only in their free movements does the world soul give utterance, making them a delicate standard of measure and blueprint for things. Thus it is with language too--whoever has a subtle sense of its application, its cadence, its musical spirit, whoever perceives in oneself the delicate effects of its inner nature, and moves one’s tongue and hand in accordance with it will be a prophet; in contrast, whoever knows it but does not have sufficient ear and sensibility for language, writes truths such as these, will be held hostage by language itself and will be mocked by human beings, as was Cassandra among the Trojans. If I believe I have hereby declared most precisely the essence and office of poesy, I know nonetheless that no human being can understand it, and that I have said something quite foolish, for the mere reason that I wanted to say it, so that no poesy comes to be. Yet what would happen if I had to talk? and if this linguistic drive to speak were the characteristic of inspiration of language, and of the efficacy of language in me? and if my will only willed precisely everything that I had to will--then in the end this could be without my knowledge or belief poesy and could make a mystery of language comprehensible? and thus I would be a writer by vocation, inasmuch as a writer is only an enthusiast of language?--
Translation by Ferit Güven

Dewey's Pragmatism; Continuity rather than Duality

Dewey's version of pragmatism in Chapter 2 of Democracy and Education:

"The theory of the method of knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic. Its essential feature is to maintain the continuity of knowing with an activity which purposely modifies the environment. It holds that knowledge in its strict sense of something possessed consists of our intellectual resources—of all the habits that render our action intelligent. Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and to adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge. Knowledge is not just something which we are now conscious of, but consists of the dispositions we consciously use in understanding what now happens. Knowledge as an act is bringing some of our dispositions to consciousness with a view to straightening out a perplexity, by conceiving the connection between ourselves and the world in which we live."  

I like this version of pragmatism because it applies Dewey's distrust of dualism, bypassing the temporal dualism of traditional pragmatism, which values outcomes over origins. Though this duality is better than traditional notions of knowledge, it benefits from Dewey's concept of "continuity." Rather than dividing the past and the future by the present, continuity focuses on the connections or flow that can be seen in experience, and the possibility that the knower can interact with the environment to modify that environment and its affect on her. Dewey goes into more detail about how continuity is a function of experience in this passage: 

"The advance of physiology and the psychology associated with it have shown the connection of mental activity with that of the nervous system. Too often recognition of connection has stopped short at this point; the older dualism of soul and body has been replaced by that of the brain and the rest of the body. But in fact the nervous system is only a specialized mechanism for keeping all bodily activities working together. Instead of being isolated from them, as an organ of knowing from organs of motor response, it is the organ by which they interact responsively with one another. The brain is essentially an organ for effecting the reciprocal adjustment to each other of the stimuli received from the environment and responses directed upon it. Note that the adjusting is reciprocal; the brain not only enables organic activity to be brought to bear upon any object of the environment in response to a sensory stimulation, but this response also determines what the next stimulus will be."

Lover of Wisdom

Came across this interesting statement in Chapter 24 of John Dewey's Democracy and Education. I have to admit, I almost didn't listen to this book. I only knew Dewey by reputation. In this chapter he writes about philosophy and education, outlining the place of philosophy in education as well as the place of education in philosophy. This phrase jumped out at me--and yes, I realize I'm taking it out of context, and a very complex context at that. Among other things Dewey says philosophy can contribute is by "showing what values are merely sentimental because there are no means for their realization." This struck me as odd because the implication is that only attainable values can rise above the rather low bar Dewey has set--of being attainable. To place value on those things that are not realizable is to function within emotion rather than reason in Santayana's sense of the term. The definition of philosopher as found in Plato as the "lovers of wisdom," suggests that the realization of wisdom is not possible, one can only strive. In Critias, Socrates admits at much.