He's better when he's talking about stuff no one can see

When Plato is good, he's very good. But when he's bad, he's hilarious.

There are a number of moments of the latter sort in the Timaeus. I ran across one of these some time ago, and it remains one of the funniest things I've ever read in philosophy. But there is so much more.

On the order in which a soul gets incarnated in different bodies on earth:

And if a person lived a good life throughout the due course of his time, he would at the end return to his dwelling place in his companion star, to live a life of happiness that agreed with his character. But if he failed in this, he would be born a second time, now as a woman. (42b-c)

On creating the human body:

Copying the revolving shape of the universe, the gods bound the two divine orbits into a ball-shaped body, the part that we now call our head. [...] They intended it to share in all the motions there were to be. To keep the head from rolling around on the ground without any way of getting up over its various high spots and out of the low, they gave it the body as a vehicle to make its way easy. (44d-e)

On why women want to have babies:

A woman's womb or uterus, as it is called, is a living thing within her with a desire for childbearing. Now when this remains unfruitful for an unseasonably long period of time, it is extremely frustrated and travels everywhere up and down her body. It blocks up her respiratory passages, and by not allowing her to breathe it throws her into extreme emergencies, and visits all sorts of other illnesses upon her until finally the woman's desire and the man's love bring them together....(91c-d)

Philosophy as childhood trauma

A nine year old writes about his trip to the annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association (via):

2 days after Christmas I went to a philosophy confrence [sic]. It was horrible. There were 200 philosophers. They all did weird things. They couldn't make jokes, many had beards.

In the elevator it was worse. Once a philosopher got off on the wrong floor, so said, "wait for me." "We'll take you to the 27th," said another. Nobody laughed. "Get it there are only 10 floors," said some random old guy in a country accent. You get the point it was creepy.

A few days later there was a fire. Only one person was hurt, but everyone did weird things. Like people were standing in the roads, so nonphilosophers had to lead them out. Some people went back into the hotel. Firefighters had to lead them away. Still one guy stayed and had his bags blocking the door. Firefighters told him to move his bags, so he did, but when they left he put them back. I'll never go to a philosophy confrence [sic] again.

Poor kid.

Kierkegaard on femininity

From The Sickness unto Death:

However much more tender and sensitive woman may be than man, she has neither the egotistical concept of the self nor, in a decisive sense, intellectuality. But the feminine nature is devotedness, givingness, and it is unfeminine if it is not that. Strange to say, no one can be as coy (and this is a word coined especially for women), so almost cruelly hard to please as a woman--and yet by nature she is devotedness, and (this is precisely the wonder of it) all this actually expresses that her nature is devotedness. For precisely because she carries in her being this total feminine devotedness, nature has affectionately equipped her with an instinct so sensitive that by comparison the most superior masculine reflection is nothing. ...blindfolded, she instinctively sees what she should admire, that to which she should give herself.

So, women lack a concept of the self, and are devoid of intellectual reflection, but are instead endowed with a blind instinct for devotion. It's always such a joy when philosophers talk about women.

But there's more:

In the relationship to God, where the distinction of man-woman vanishes, it holds for men as well as for women that devotion is the self and that in the giving of oneself the self is gained. This holds equally for man and woman, although it is probaby true that in most cases the woman actually relates to God only through the man.

This is a little crazy. Kierkegaard had a individualistic conception of religion which pretty much entirely ruled out the very idea of anyone relating to God "only through" some other person: the relationship with God is a direct relation between God and the single individual, and no other person can have anything to do with it.

But he needed to find some way for women to be weak even in relating to God. So he fudged a little.

Defending the faith, Maimonides style

I'm studying some medieval philosophy this quarter, and so far the star of the show is clearly Maimonides, a leading Jewish jurist and philosopher (and a member of a Jewish community which flourished under Arab, Islamic rule - something worth keeping in mind for those who think that religious differences (particularly those involving Muslims) are an irremediable threat to the public peace).

Maimonides' major philosophical work is The Guide of the Perplexed, which deals with, among other things, the problem of people who raise objections against scripture. At one point, he addresses a representative example (of someone who criticizes the story of Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the Garden). Never mind the substance of the objection and Maimonides' response - just feast on how he prefaces the response:

O you who engage in theoretical speculation using the first notions that may occur to you and come to your mind and who consider withal that you understand a book that is the guide of the first and the last men while glancing through it as you would glance through a historical work or a piece of poetry - when, in some of your hours of leisure, you leave off drinking and copulating: collect yourself and reflect, for things are not as you thought following the first notion that occurred to you, but rather as is made clear through reflection upon the following speech. (Guide, I, 2)

Sadly I was unable to "reflect upon the following speech", for I was laughing too hard at the time. (Maimonides presents this as something he actually said as part of a real conversation. If only we could go back in time and bring him into the present to have a chat with Richard Dawkins.)

And here is a diagnosis of why some people are limited in their abilities to understand religious matters:

There are, moreover, many people who have received from their first natural disposition a complexion of temperament with which perfection is in no way compatible. Such is the case of one whose heart is naturally exceedingly hot; for he cannot refrain from anger, even if he subject his soul to very stringent training. This is also the case of one whose testicles have a hot and humid temperament and are of a strong constitution and in whom the seminal vessels abundantly generate semen. (Guide, I, 34)

One of those is, in fact, a major difficulty I have faced throughout my own studies.

The creation story of the Timaeus

In the Timaeus, Plato describes the fashioning of the universe (thought of as a living being) by the Creator:

...he made the world in the form of a globe, round as from a lathe, having its extremes in every direction equidistant from the centre, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures; for he considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike. This he finished off, making the surface smooth all around for many reasons; in the first place, because the living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him. Of design he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself. ...as he had no need to take anything or defend himself against any one, the Creator did not think it necessary to bestow upon him hands: nor had he any need of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking; but the movement suited to his spherical form was assigned to him, being of all the seven that which is most appropriate to mind and intelligence; and he was made to move in the same manner and on the same spot, within his own limits revolving in a circle. All the other six motions were taken away from him, and he was made not to partake of their deviations. And as this circular movement required no feet, the universe was created without legs and without feet.

So if you've ever wondered why the universe is perfectly spherical, or why it's lacking in eyes, ears, mouth, hands, and feet, there's your answer.

OMG, it burns!

Dawn drew my attention to the following claim from Spinoza's Ethics:

...when we look at the sun, we imagine it as about two hundred feet away from us...

And then my brain stopped working for a few minutes.

How to write philosophy

(...in lieu of actually writing philosophy, which is what I'm supposed to be doing...)

From the preface to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Remarks:

I would like to say 'This book is written to the glory of God', but nowadays that would be chicanery, that is, it would not be rightly understood. It means the book is written in good will, and in so far as it is not so written, but out of vanity, etc., the author would wish to see it condemned. He cannot free it of those impurities further than he himself is free of them.

And two quotes from Kant (via Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy):

I would find myself more useless than the common laborer if I did not believe that what I am doing can give worth to all others in establishing the rights of mankind.

And most horrifyingly:

Every philosophical work must be susceptible of popularization; if not, it probably conceals nonsense beneath a fog of seeming sophistication.

Some nice standards to live up to, but, come on, that last one is just unfair, and also a bit ironic, coming from Kant.