Time isn't holding us

Currently at Toronto Pearson: 18. High today: 24. Low was 12; in KW, the spread was 25-7. At Toronto Island: 21-14.

Find the ace of the Rays' pitching staff: in 27 starts this year, Scott Kazmir has pitched more than six innings six times. (Five of those were consecutive, in May and June; the last one was July 21.) In 32 starts, James Shields has pitched more than six innings 24 times. And it's not that the Rays are babying Kazmir's wonky arm: twice this year, Kazmir has thrown 110 pitches in less than five innings. (I was expecting that Kazmir would comfortably lead the AL in pitches/inning this year, but he's actually going to be runner up, by my calculations, for that title, which is instead going to the old Blue Jays poet laureate Miguel Batista.)

It will be so nice next year when the Yankees don't make the playoffs and it's not that interesting.

On one hand, I can see why academics moan about teaching getting in the way of their "research"--I'm only teaching two courses this term, and I'm really not going to have time to do any serious writing, mostly because of all the marking I'm going to be doing. (I could set up my courses so that I have much less marking to do, by having the students write fewer, longer things, instead of the many short things I have them write, but I'm convinced that many short things are better for them and make me want to blow my head off less, even though I spend more time on them.) On the other hand, teaching makes me read texts in such an intense way! It was teaching that got me into Plato in the first place, and it was teaching that gave birth to my Meno paper. My Republic class is doing about a book a week; we're on to Book 3 this week. Everyone knows there's lots going on in Book 1, and lots going on from the middle to the end, but I was a bit worried about whether there would be enough in each of Books 2 and 3 to support a whole class. Well, there's always a bonanza in Plato, if you just look. In Books 2 and 3, what looks puzzlingly like repetition at first glance (and every subsequent glance) turns out to be variation with an essential difference, if you look. Adeimantus says that Glaucon's case for injustice in Book 2 isn't put strongly enough, it has left out the most important thing, and then he seems to repeat the case Glaucon has just made. The difference (but I owe this one to Allan Bloom) is announced in the first words Adeimantus says in his speech that is going to strengthen Glaucon's case by pointing out the most important thing: "What fathers tell their sons ... ". No convincing case can be made in favour of justice unless fathers stop telling their sons stories about the gods and the heroes in which crime pays. It doesn't matter whether the stories are true or not. Glaucon wanted what the stories say to be refuted; Adeimantus's point is that the force of the stories defies refutation because it's engrained in people when they are children. This is what Socrates tells the jury in the Apology (and I notice this connection because we did the Apology in my Laurier class): I can't convince you of my innocence because I have already been convicted by the stories you've heard about me all your lives.

Another thing that shows itself when you look is that Books 2 and 3, despite appearances, each form organic wholes, and the breaks at the end of each occur in logical places. Glaucon begins his case for injustice with an account of the genesis of justice in the genesis of the polis; Adeimantus then makes his case that justice will have to overcome the stories promoting injustice. Socrates begins his answer by giving an account of the genesis of the polis, which is supposed to yield an account of justice, and this carries on into an account of how the stories told to children (or, at least, to the future guardians of the polis) should be changed.

The beginning of Book 3 seems to just continue the account of how stories should be changed, but now the account moves in turn through each of the virtues that the stories should instill. Courage appears right at the beginning of Book 3: the stories must not promote fear of the afterlife and hence of death. Next, stories must not promote immoderation, as they do when they have Zeus unable to control his lust and Achilles susceptible to bribery. Next, stories must not promote impiety, as they do when Achilles is angry at a river-god. Three virtues down--how about justice, then? Can't do that yet, says Socrates; we still don't know what it is. Let's talk about the styles of stories, instead. Stories shouldn't have too much dialogue in them--they shouldn't imitate others too much. In fact, they should only imitate the best people, at their best. Why? Eventually it comes out that stories shouldn't have too much dialogue, they shouldn't try to get into too many different characters, because people are supposed to concentrate on being themselves--they're supposed to do their own work, hone their own virtue which is proper to their own particular work, and this can't be done if we're trying to get into too many different people's heads. And the dialogue moves on, and the significance of this puzzling discussion of dialogue, which would have Plato's works banned from the city, only comes to the surface in Book 4: the nature of justice, Socrates says, has been there in front of them all along, ever since they started describing how a city comes to be; justice is a matter of each doing their own work, each doing and being as is fitting for them. So in Book 3, Socrates says that the discussion of how justice should be promoted in stories would have to be left off until they had decided what justice is, but then he immediately launches into a discussion of how justice should be promoted in stories--not in their substance, but in their style.

When he has finished the discussion of the muse-ical training of the guardians, Socrates says that this training will show the budding guardians the forms of the virtues, so that they will recognize them later on when they are presented with rational accounts of them. (He doesn't say it as clearly as that, but by way of an initially puzzling analogy with learning letters on the way to learning words and sentences.) Book 3 shows us the forms of the virtues, of which we will subsequently be provided rational accounts.

But Book 3 doesn't show us the forms of all the virtues. One cardinal virtue doesn't appear in Book 3, namely, wisdom. (Even piety appears, though piety is left out of Book 4's discussion of the civic virtues.) Wisdom appears at the beginning of Book 4, and begins the process of sorting through the civic virtues of wisdom, justice, and moderation, to try to find justice as the remainder after the other three have been outlined. At the beginning of Book 4, wisdom is identified as the virtue proper to the rulers, who are wise because they know the city as a whole. (The polis-psuche analogy would have it therefore that those people are wise who know themselves as wholes.) The rulers appear at the end of Book 3, when, after completing the discussion of the muse-ical and physical training of the guardians, and pointing out, again, the dual nature of the guardians--this is the point with which the discussion of their education began; they must be "spirited", thumotic, aggressive, but they must also be gentle toward their own people--Socrates suddenly asks: which among them are to be the rulers and which are to be the ruled? Nothing seems to motivate this question. Does it go without saying that there must be a class above the guardians to tell them what to do? Maybe ... not likely. The question comes right after Socrates repeats that the guardians must partake of both natures, the spirited and the gentle. He splits the guardian class in half right after he says that. The implication that seems to insist itself is that such dual-natured guardians are impossible. Wisdom doesn't appear in Book 3 because the basically thumotic guardians aren't up for it.

And now the library is closing--and I haven't even gotten anywhere near the best thing I've discovered, about Thrasymachus's confusion in Book 1!