Shameless self-promotion
My piece on the section on measure in Plato's Statesman is finally out in Plato: The Internet Journal of the International Plato Society (link takes you to the table of contents). Not the most earth-shattering of arguments, perhaps: basically an attempt to show that the obscure "measure of the mean" discussed at Statesman 283bff is not as weird as it looks, and even that it provides a good basis for a serious understanding of measurement in all human know-how ("technical" knowledge). But mostly a technical matter of interpretation, if a somewhat unorthodox one.
The whole business of measurement in modern technology comes up in a book I've been reading, Joel Mokyr's The Gifts of Athena: The Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Mokyr argues in chapter 2 that part of what created the conditions for modern economic growth was an increased emphasis on measurability by engineers and other people with technical knowledge. I wonder if, taking the long view (wild speculation warning), (what I take to be) the historical misunderstanding of the Stranger's theory of measure as a theory of purely qualitative measurement hindered the possibility of a similar phenomenon taking place in the ancient world. (Not that there weren't many other more important factors for this, but...). Then again, the Statesman was never very popular in the Platonic canon.
On an entirely different note, I recently found out about Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (http://ndpr.nd.edu); you can subscribe to a mailing list and get a review of a philosophical book more or less every day of the year. Most of these probably would not be interesting to you, but it's kind of interesting to see what philosophers are publishing these days. (Does anybody else in this group subscribe to it?)
The whole business of measurement in modern technology comes up in a book I've been reading, Joel Mokyr's The Gifts of Athena: The Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Mokyr argues in chapter 2 that part of what created the conditions for modern economic growth was an increased emphasis on measurability by engineers and other people with technical knowledge. I wonder if, taking the long view (wild speculation warning), (what I take to be) the historical misunderstanding of the Stranger's theory of measure as a theory of purely qualitative measurement hindered the possibility of a similar phenomenon taking place in the ancient world. (Not that there weren't many other more important factors for this, but...). Then again, the Statesman was never very popular in the Platonic canon.
On an entirely different note, I recently found out about Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (http://ndpr.nd.edu); you can subscribe to a mailing list and get a review of a philosophical book more or less every day of the year. Most of these probably would not be interesting to you, but it's kind of interesting to see what philosophers are publishing these days. (Does anybody else in this group subscribe to it?)
posted by Xavier Marquez @ 9:51 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Bryn Mawr Ancient reviews? Do they review ancient philosophy there?
Thanks Jeremy and Jeff for the link. I subcribed today - let's see what it's like.
As to why am I not motivated to read Strauss- well, I guess it's partly a sense of disatisfaction with his thought. I no longer think his analysis of modernity is all that interesting; and while I admire some of his writings (especially his work on Plato and several medieval thinkers - these are superbly crafted interpretive studies, which his students have often repeated but rarely been able to match) there is something rigid and sterile about the whole project. There's too much talk about the basic questions of political philosophy, but too little engagement with serious inquiry into modern politics or with modern science at any level beyond rhetorical generalities.
It's a little like my disatisfaction with Heidegger; I used to be entranced by him, especially his later work, but now he sounds vaguely Monty Pythonesque (Nancy does a wicked parody of the opening pages of "What is Called Thinking?" that comes to mind). Not that
I think there's nothing valuable in his work - there's lots that I still consider valuable, including things his later work - I just would not be very interested in reading him right now.
Do you ever get that sense? I guess that's one reason I've been drifting towards reading philosophers in the modern analytical tradition, and more sociology - though sometimes unaware of history, they seem often more willing to tackle genuinely interesting questions (at least interesting to me).
Attacking frineds and defending your enemies - I seem to remember Socrates suggesting that that was not a very good definition of justice :-)
My problem is less animosity than a loss of interest in certain people I once thought exceedingly illuminating. Though I too have my partisan loves and dislikes.
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