Knowledge of the Soul
Knowledge of the soul
In soul’s own book is wrapped
In papers manifold
proportions, harmonies of kind
The lives of noble kings and queens unfold
The images divine.
The light on man awakens her
Emerging beauty to behold in time
The hero’s penance wakens her
And clears the eye of mind.
And So:
Knowledge of the soul
Is wrapped in books its own
Recalled anew to each each time
A dance ensouled
Of memory and mind.
Louie Louie: 1955 Richard Berry
Written by the blues man Richard Berry, who performed the piece as rock blues in 1989, Louie Louie may be the best candidate for the first Rock song. The 1955 version rocks as much as the Kingsmen, and the lyrics are audible, after the fifties style that reminds of the Platters. A version by Rockin’ Robin Roberts from 1955 adds the comment introducing the rockabilly guitar solo, “All right, now you give it to ‘em.” (You Tube). The Berry performance at J. J’s Blues Cafe indicates yet un-mined possibilities for a Classic Rock version yet to come. Iggy Pop performed the song in Europe, giving the one lyric people usually know, “Me gotta go now” a political, suicidal and punk meaning, making this in a way the punk song, and continuing the tradition of protest against the obvious illiberties of our very modern world, like “America is filling the world with garbage.” (Granted, but Berlin is closer to Chernobyl, where the people have no say, and pollution is worse.) When the Kingsmen released “Louie Louie” in 1963 there was a fury of protest which included bizarre guesses as to what the lyrics, difficult to decipher, might be. Famously, the F.B.I., following the Indiana Governor (who in turn was following the gossip of girls and women) investigated the song for the supposed obscenities which outraged parents imagined that they were hearing in the garbled words of the song. The actual lyrics were written and recorded by Richard Berry in 1955, and recorded in a less famous but arguably superior version. The lyrics tell a love story in three parts:
Fine little girl she waits for me
Me catch the ship for cross the sea
Me sail the ship all alone
Me never thinks me make it home.
(Chorus) Louie, Louie, Oh, no baby, Me Gotta Go
Three Nights and Days me sail the sea
Me think of girl constantly
On the ship I dream she there
I smell the Rose in her hair.
(Chorus, guitar solo)
Me see Jamaican moon above
It won’t be long, me see my love
I take her in my arms and then
Me tell her I never leave again
Louie, Louie, (oh no, baby,) me gotta go
Louie, Louie, (oh, baby,) me gotta go
(Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC)
The song is not perverse in the least, but is in fact a rather simple and beautiful Jamaican love song. As will be addressed momentarily, it is about true love rather than the animal appetite, and has of course nothing to do with the perversions imagined by those complaining to the F.B.I. But first, something profound appears from reflecting on Louie Louie. It is written in the most common lyric structure of three verses of four lines with a Chorus in between, making up five parts, or six if the Chorus is repeated at the end. The chorus or refrain, the part repeated amid the stanzas, ought to contain the principle of the song, while the stanzas elaborate the principle by showing its unfolding in the particular. It contains a drama or story in the simplest way possible, abstracted, leaving a great many things out to distill the essential experience of the soul. In its dramatic setting, it is sung by a Jamaican man who has a girl, or, is in love. In his circumstance, she waits for him while he catches a ship aiming to journey across the sea. It is not clear where he is going, but the reason he goes may be how the refrain connects to the three verses. It seems to mean something like “oh, boy, I gotta get out of here.” The circumstance is an example of the content of what Carl Jung might call an “archetype,” indicated by a pattern common to the structure of myth and symbol in many, if not in every, culture of mankind in many places and times. The truth about true love, at least of one sort, is that the lover sets off on a journey of the soul that is compared to the sailing of a ship across the sea, aiming at the transcendent “other shore.” Sometimes the princess is found on the other shore, and this is a different kind of love. Examples are found in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Nights Dream (II, i, 126-127), and many other places. The pattern of land-sea-other shore, or “leaving and returning,” as Steven Rowe took this up,[2] is also found in the quest for knowledge, and is either the same as this quest or a natural image of it, occurring on a lower level in a pattern that is the same or similar. It is evident too in the journey of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain then there is” is a similar three part expression, borrowed apparently from Buddhist teaching, by Donovan. Five parts to the journey can be seen, if one could include the return across the sea and the return home.
In this case, though, our sailor does not seem to arrive at the other shore, but has an experience of missing her that makes him return home determined never to leave again. It turns out that the ship he caught is a single person sail boat in which he sails all alone. He apparently gets lost, since he thinks he will never succeed at returning home. So ends the first verse.
At the start of the second and central verse, our sailor, in despair of ever returning and thinking he will die, is found sailing the seas for three nights and days. This period of time is the same, for example, as the time between the crucifixion and the resurrection, or the time Jonah spent in the belly of the whale. He thinks of his beloved constantly, and has a hallucinatory dream experience in which he thinks that she is there with him on the ship. The experience is so real that he believes he can smell the rose flower in her hair. The near apparition might be called by Jung an image caused by that in the soul which he calls “anima.” The word derived from Latin simply means soul or life, but it has here a more particular meaning, such as that in “you’re my soul and my inspiration.” The lover, who has never seen any of the higher things before, sees this in the beloved. Jung is the modern authority on this, and introduced the idea, with that of the archetypes, into modern psychology.[3] He was attempting to understand the permanent structures of the human psyche and the spiritual nature of man that is the cause of the notable similarities in the products of the human imagination. He introduced an understanding of the unconscious deeper than the Freudian repository of repressed memories, a living source of myth and symbol, often emerging to compensate the one sided conscious mind. The anima is the feminine unconscious of a man projected in love, the cause of the numinous manifestation and exaggerated beauty of the one loved, as Aphrodite casts her aspersions. The corresponding function in a woman is called by Jung animus, after the Latin word for spirit, and so every love is a dance of spirit and soul. Animus is more the understanding of the hero, as knights would once perform labors for their ladies. Jung writes: Every real love relation consists in the woman finding her hero and the hero his soul, not in dreams, but in palpable reality.” There is, then, a knowledge of the things of love within the human soul.
In the third verse, he has not yet arrived home, but has at least found his bearings again. He sees the Jamaican moon above, indicating that he is on a rout headed home. He has resolved that when he returns, he will take her in his arms and tell her that he will never leave again. The conclusion is then something like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who concludes that there is no place like home. The song expresses the things about the soul that might be involved for example in a man who leaves his beloved to play the field a bit before marriage, learning what he needed to, that is, how much he really wants his true love permanently. Yet the expression is anything but common. Through the symbol, the particular becomes an image that connects us to the universal human experience, through something like the knowledge in the human soul about itself. According to the ancient teaching, the soul contains knowledge, especially of human things, and if we try and do not give up, it is possible to remember or recollect all things,[4] or to recollect the access to the contemplation of all things, in a certain sense (Plato, Meno, 81). This knowledge in the soul of man is both the cause of the images produced by the soul and of the numinous attraction that is characteristic of transcendent beauty.[5]
Finally, in an astonishing late note, The lead singer for the Kingsmen, Jack Ely, has said in an interview on the web that the song, or the phrase “Me gotta go,” is sung to a bartender on this shore, by one who was once a sailor, about returning to his love in Jamaica, in Rasta dialect out of affection for the land of his love. This gives the image a five part structure, and makes the song much better, with a successful crossing rather than an aborted crossing of the water, whether he is Jamaican or American. “Me gotta go,” or to sing Louie Louie, is to leave America, or to leave the bar or the gathering of gold here on the other shore, to set off for love and home again, and this, unconsciously, is the most essential rock phrase.
The supposedly obscene rock lyrics are actually a simple love song. As will be shown, when the soul produces a love song, it tends to expresses and uphold true love. These things are difficult to discuss in words, let alone in science, yet we cannot discuss music unless some effort is made. Love is of course different from the animal appetite for sex. It is a human thing, and tends to be disinterested in all others except the one loved, at least for a time. Hence the lover is called “true” or faithful and this sort of love distinguished, as a great blessing, from false love, which only appears to be genuine, and is characterized by infidelity. We, the lovers, surely note that the vast majority seem incapable of true love, though their lives stability depend upon love’s semblance. One astounding thing found in the present study of contemporary music is that, especially among the classics, the love songs about true love outnumber the songs about sex by ten or one hundred fold. Apparently the soul does not write much inspired poetry about the old rock and roll, but rather, writes about love, since this is where the human touches on the immortal. As Socrates tells Phaedrus, beauty is the only one of the eternal forms to be allowed visible manifestation (Phaedrus, 250 c). Even so, beauty must hide and be hidden (Herodotus, I.16). To see for example wisdom in the visible, would overwhelm our natures. This is surprising, and even a bit embarrassing, but as we will see, our study of the best music lyrics will become in part a study of love, and the things that can be learned from lyric poetry about love. As Socrates tells Glaucon, “Surely music matters should end in love matters that concern the beautiful” or “noble,” (403 c5) as the Greek word means both. And would it not be “the fairest sight, for him who is able to see,” “if the noble dispositions that are in the soul and those that agree and accord with them in the form should ever coincide in anyone” (402 d 1-3). It is extremely difficult for us to speak in prose, as distinct from poetry, regarding the things of love, and a prose writer must, like the interpreter of lyrics, beg allowance for a certain awkwardness. We must for example, speak of “lover” and the “beloved,” or the one loved, using a word rarely heard in American English except surrounding funerals. Our only apology is that if we could find less awkward words or ways to describe these things, we would. And we will try not to be too much like one explaining a joke. As Jung writes, in every love, one is more the container and the other the contained by the love, and to varying degrees.[6] The lover is naturally inclined to be faithful or to stay, while the one loved must be persuaded to stay rather than wander. Sometimes the male or masculine, and sometimes the female or feminine, is the lover, and vice versa, so that the attempt to understand love or any particular love is from the beginning very complicated. Yet in each relation, lover and beloved are recognizable. The male as lover is different from the female as lover, and so on for the one loved. Not all people do love, though most can inspire love in some other. Males who do not love see love itself as effeminate, while women who do not love use the things of love for their economic or household advantage. Love has its own morality, or set of ethical principles that pervade common sense, though none are able to give an account of why these principles are everywhere assumed. The study of love and justice, or justice in love, beginning with the things said in middle schools (that one is only “using” another, etc.) would be a worthwhile undertaking, though we lack the theoretical basis that would make the inquiry possible.
Throughout history, it has been difficult to distinguish true love from the mere animal appetite, since these two occur together, and are even mixed in varying degrees. Romeo and Juliet was once seen as a warning against the excesses of passion. There has always been a tradition that is unwilling to admit the distinction, and so there is a perennial conservative position evident in both religion and philosophy that condemns love along with sex as immoral. The princess is to shut up and marry by the convenience and arrangement of the kingdom. The erotics of Socrates, a study that takes the things of love quite seriously, was always questionably received, and nothing like this is to be found in Aristotle, or anywhere else in the tradition of over two thousand years of human study and writing. Augustine left wife and family for his priesthood. The Christian saints generally see love as a temptation away from the life of dedication to God, and it is only with the poetry of the Romantics and Shakespeare that there is an argument for the principle of the Song of Solomon, that love is the life of the soul in the image of God. True love is a rare thing, though it may occur more often than appears. One would like to think it is possible for each once in their lives, but it is more likely that is possible for no more than one in ten. Yet it is the truth of every love that does commonly occur. It is the participation of two in the Edenic harmony, the same as that entered alone and in fullness by the rarest of singular souls. Romeo and Juliet are like the two hands of a praying saint (Romeo and Juliet, I, v 98-112). Hence it is experienced as a divine condition, and the lover wishes that this joy would fill the earth, or that this love would appear everywhere. The agony and anguish of the lover is that this harmonious state is only temporary, subject to our mortality. Either it grows into something different, in the full partnership of the parents in a household, or it sends the lover on a lifelong journey to find again this lost harmony, and be a sending off through pain onto the solitary quest that is philosophy. Maybe it is sometimes both, though this seems unlikely.
When the highest inspiration hits the California Music scene, for example surrounding the harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, it is the inspiration to permanent monogamous unity, the lover calling the usually unattainable beloved to walk with them through life and forever, and the wonder of what might be should this happen. The examples abound, but some of the first to come to mind are Neal Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand.” attempting to persuade her that she is old enough to take one lover and change her name, or Heart of Gold. What happens in a sense in the history of rock, at least in one strain, is that the liberation of sex leads the musicians to discover love. The pioneers are burned by the freedom of the women they seek, and this collision with reality nearly destroys them in some cases, but permanently changes them. But the natural love is the permanent love that is the basis of the foundation of the family, and so stands at the foundation of all political society, if each family is a pillar. The image of the living oak tree in the home of Odysseus, used to make his bedpost, and so it is here that the natural and conventional meet in human society (Homer, Odyssey XXIII, 183-229). The early song Who Put the Bomp asks who it was that put these irrational elements of rhythm into the music (Who put the bomp in the bomp shu etc.):
“Who was that man
I’d like to shake his hand
He made my baby fall in love
With me
The words, he says, “went right into her heart,” and made her say they’d “never have to part,” and continue to set her heart aglow.[7]
Love is very difficult to talk about, let alone to write about, which is why no one does it, and a part of why the meaning of music is so awkward to discuss. To this day, the best theoretical writings on love are the Greek discussions, which assume homosexual love. Nowhere except Shakespeare has heterosexual love been discussed in any way comparable. Yet the discussion of popular music assumes a theory of love, and this can be outlined or introduced, as the topics emerge. Love pertains to the political or human rather than the animal part of man, involving the passions of the soul rather than only the appetites of the body. In love, the body goes with the soul, or the two move together. One is tempted to say that the soul draws the body forth. This is a great mystery of man. But from our earliest post-pubescent days, growing up as a fashion hippie of the sort that arose in the seventies, even while growing up without much of the traditional society and its limitation of sex to marriage, we always upheld, even as a point of morality, the belief that love, not appetite, justified lovers. We didn’t think of marriage, and no one we knew was married, but the equivalent of adultery for the adult was infidelity to one’s designated girlfriend or boyfriend, which was synonymous with breaking up, because it means definitively that they do not love you. This is in a way the natural opinion of common sense, even to this day. Even while sex is rampant, (if dampened by the STD), it is still common in every junior high and high school to uphold the distinction between the promiscuous, called “sluts,” and the ladies, who are at least more discreet, holding out on their treasures awaiting the persuasion of the male, the winning of her heart. Love has its own persistent and natural morality that is commonly assumed, and heard daily in the things people say, though no one can really explain the assumptions involved. The assumed injustice of infidelity is an example. One is tempted to say, though, that the world is divided into lovers and non lovers, because those “cheating” do not believe in the common assumptions about love and justice, and do not believe that truth is owed. Many love songs are courtship songs, calling the one loved to come and be together. These songs remind of the mating calls of birds, and can be especially beautiful in this way, as clues to the mysteries and mysterious details of human courtship. These may awaken the beloved to certain conditions or ways of life that are possible, or incite admiration. C. S. Lewis, citing Chesterton, writes, “Those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves with promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy.” The promise is… “to be true to the beloved as long as I live.”[8] This seems as true today as in 1943, though for many, it is not so. One part of the drama is the triumph of love over the animal appetite for sex, which is indiscriminate, or not attached particularly to the one loved. This drama occurs in the soul and in life, and is visible through some very common symbolic expressions. One simple example will appear if we consider the early video game Donkey Kong, in which a plumber avoids obstacles and ascends levels of a structure in trying to rescue a girl from an attacking ape. The image is similar, or the same archetype is at work, in the story of King Kong. The ape is a part of the hero himself that he meets as if outside himself, and in every common marriage, the struggle for the male is in part to rescue the woman from the barbarity of his own appetites. The slaying of the dragon for the princess is a similar image, and if this work does not occur, happiness in the household will not be possible. It may be that there is a natural hierarchy of the parts of the soul, and a corresponding natural hierarchy of the priorities of human life. So the passion of the plumber is a part of the very “passion” that is behind the genuine marriages, uniting the couples at the founding of families more permanent than those based on more transitory motives. It is on these marriages that the health and stability of the republic, and the strength of the economy, depends. Even the tradition of courtly love failed to appreciate the significance of love to marriage, because marriage was then so highly conventional that it almost never had anything to do with love. To true love, marriage is the assumed goal, but the conventions are indeed secondary. What occurred, though, is that the breakdown of the traditional morality that secured marriage and family was precursor to a divorce rate of over half the population. Nor can our education, concerned only with science and economically useful technology, prepare our characters so that our loves are more permanent. Traditional marriage was like a trellis or buttress that held families together through the tough times, though admittedly it seems to have been too frequent that the households were private despotisms It is not clear, though, whether any society can survive such a circumstance– it has literally never occurred before, even in the worst degeneration of the old Roman empire, and this we hardly notice. As we accepted the appetites, and lost contact with the symbols and images that take us “higher,” the diffuse tendencies of the appetites destroyed the traditional family.
Yet it is astonishing to consider how often the most popular songs uphold the true and lasting love that is the reason for the teaching of monogamy, that we ought have only one beloved with whom we share even our bodies and natural appetites. So many blues songs are about the pain of the lover at the infidelity of the beloved that if one were to judge from the lasting music of the sixties, he would hardly be able to tell that there was such a theme as “free love.” Consider for example The Kinks “All Day and All of the Night,” which begins by shocking the sixties with a date after hours, but soon rises to “I believe that You and me’d last forever/ Oh yea, all day, and night I’m yours, leave me never.” Cream’s “What you gonna do” off Disraeli Gears, or better yet, the many songs of Led Zeppelin based on the old blues songs written from the agony of the lover, such as “Heartbreaker,” “Communication Breakdown,” “Dazed and Confused,” etc…The agony of the lover is the tragic obverse of the assumption of love that leads to the promises of courtship: The experience of the Edenic harmony carries with it the desire that it continue forever, and hence the desire for immortality, though it is first a desire not to live forever, but to be with the beloved forever. Consummation solidifies the attachment, so that separation disturbs the soul itself. Even songs like “Foxy Lady” and “Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire,” where the rock energy is an expression of the goal of sex, ends up saying she’s “got to be all mine,” and “let me stand next to your fire” means something more than intercourse. He wants to be warmed by her hotness, as our more contemporary slang would put it, but this is also to be made alive by her beauty by being near to it. The blues expresses, and helps us to live with, the otherwise inexpressible anguish that can come with love, shared as the somewhat universal experience of our fellows as well, in the blues and in the sad ballads. Similarly, as in the song “Thank You,” it is the lasting love that inspires the most beautiful poetry. “God only knows what I’d be without you,” is the Brian Wilson song McCartney calls his favorite of all songs. The theme can be heard in nearly every love song, calling the one loved to be faithful and true in love. The rock stars seem a bit embarrassed at the beauty of their love songs, somewhat, as it sometimes seems to me, as Plant was embarrassed before Page, and tried to hide the high classical beauty of his lyrics. He seems to get away with it because Page cares more about the sounds, and will tolerate the good so long as it is deep. Somewhat like the majority in matters of romantic fidelity and justice, most music assumes the things also upheld by common sense, on which the sexual revolution quickly finds its limit. The soul sings not about sex but about love, and love has a nature, or is a certain way according to nature. (I have just heard “Take it on the Run” on our local classic rock station, another example). The list is long, and the examples countless, new and old, while the songs about sex are for the most part transitory, and among classics, rare. The heart sings the song of hearts, even when free to sing rather the song of the body and its rhythms, so that the songs which become popular and lasting are or tend to be those which speak to the hearts of the millions. That a true lover would not leave his love to care for their child alone, nor conversely sleep with the neighbor and have her beloved raise the offspring surreptitiously, need not be said, but is assumed. For all our biological-based psychology about reproductive drives and genetic advantage, it is entirely plausible that the things of love are natural to the human soul, and of primary importance in the founding of happy families. The liberation of the passions and the rhythms of sex seem to have coincided with a near genuine cult of love among the poets: “the lovers will rise up (Cohen);” Children of the sun begin to awake (Led Zeppelin).” It is as though the tradition had become ossified, and it was needed to “Rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.”[9]
Have You Ever Seen The Rain? – Creedence Clearwater Revival https://youtu.be/ixmvEtQyzvs via
The rare experience of the weather phenomenon of sunshine and rain at once is the particular for this profundity with a perfect lyric structure – often the clue to a song’s meaning. About three times in one’s life, he sees the evening or morning sun shining under a raining cloud, making lightrain.
The four sets of lines are set in a symmetry that helps in reading the song, as the position of a line can then help to reveal its meaning:
Someone told me long ago Yesterday and days before
There’s a calm before the storm Sun is cold and rain is hard I know I know
Its been comin’ for some time. ‘Been that way for all my time
When its over, so they say Till forever on it goes
It’ll rain a sunny day Through the circle fast and slow
I know I know
Shinin’ down like water It don’t stop, I wonder
I wanna know,
Have you ever seen the rain?
“
Comin’ down on a sunny day?
The words are difficult to memorize, because they are difficult to think, until one sees the perfect lyric structure order, centered around “I know.” It is about how the sun comes out after a storm, bringing the wisdom of the past to bear on a present circumstance, in the calm before. There is a conjunction of light and water, in the rare experience of sunshine and rain at once which turns into a vision of the reign of grace and justice.
The rain of sunshine joins the images of light and water into a vision, “shining down like water.” In the second half, his own experience is brought to bear: But in this world, the apparent sun is cold, the weather rough, but it keeps leading souls upward. It is a marvel that it continues. The weather has always been hard, the sun in this world often bringing little comfort., as it has been for his long life. And so it is eternally, as lightrain is an image of the emanating eternal.
So the cycle of sun and rainstorm continues permanently, and the foreseen coming crisis is set in the perspective of eternity. It may be an act of knowledge, if lyric pets are permitted from innocence what for lovers of wisdom would preempt, not stimulate wonder. If the line is “up it goes,” the souls are ascending generation after generation through thew cycle of fortune and misfortune. The conjunction of tragedy and comedy in the image of sunlight rain is reported of Cordelia, the daughter of Lear, whose love for her father the king amid tears is said to be “like sunshine and rain at once.”
On an even more mystic note, Lao Tzu: “Heaven and earth will come together, And a gentle rain will fall.” Precipitation in a clear sky might be caused by the aura of baptism.
· Jun 26
Have You Ever Seen The Rain? – Creedence Clearwater Revival https://youtu.be/ixmvEtQyzvs via @YouTube
Have You Ever Seen The Rain? – Creedence Clearwater Revival https://youtu.be/ixmvEtQyzvs via @YouTube
Class 1981/ 1983 GVSC
[In progress:]
Using Bloom’s Republic and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with brief modern contrasts at the conclusion, Wasserman furthered the project of Leo Strauss to recover ancient Socratic Political philosophy.
The torch of philosophy is being transferred in this from Germany to America, having come to Germany through France, Britain and Italy, from the Petrarchan recovery of the texts of Byzantium. The Hebrew American immigrants, having seen Germany seared, have yet been able to graft philosophy onto the native Americans, and we are seeing how this takes.
Class notes are difficult for a reader to decipher, and exclude much, including the note taker’s own participation and questions. I enjoy watching myself learn the importance of what is occurring here, gradually beginning to take study seriously in a new way.
Page 1
Wednesday
Dramatic contrast of ancients/moderns
“I see my teaching of philosophy that way”- Irv
Explicit repudiation of the ancients- Machiavelli/Hobbes/Bacon/Descartes
Mathematics- Descartes wipe the slate clear- of truth.
Skepticism endemic- That all must be “proven.”
Certainty- clarity, or else therew is no answer.
Political philosophy (as distinct from political science) (is) dead for all practical purposes.
Is Plato recoverable through modern eyes?
Dialogues.
Start with the ancients in order to see what we said “no” to.
History. But Plato didn’t have history.
Context, yes, but relative to time, no.
What is justice? / What is Plato’s justice?
Through Polemarchus to Thrasymachus.
Lecture Friday January 16th, 1981
All of the dialogue is intentional.
Philosophy and political [philosophy appear inseparable.
[Jean] That none is superfluous. Take it as a whole.
There is no Platonic doctrine as ordinarily understood. [Ken]
Bloom renders in translation.
Concreteness and participation.
ancient/modern. Wasserman: specific characters, questions, answers. Socrates can’t give the answers. We don’t know if there is an “answer.”
Nothing concrete is a what
We may have said no to a Plato that is not Plato.
Lecture Jan 19th Monday
Very nice.
telling me its theory
that the soul is a sphere
but then it corrects itself
it is constantly correcting itself
and says it is not actually a sphere
but we call it a sphere in order to convey
that it lacks any sort of lack or insufficiency
it takes a stick in its beak, it clears the ground with its wings
and starts sketching a system. it draws a circle and labels it
“language” and then on the perimeter it writes “reality”
and then draws another circle around those two and labels that “the
complign sphere of intercessionality” and then it says — look, beyond that circumference
Do you see? Do you see? SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK Do you see?
The wings of the bird are blowing up the dirt where it (he? she?) drew its diagrams the sky
is too dark to see it is an orange red, the spirit…
View original post 36 more words
Notes; Essay in progress [any thoughts?]
Medieval chivalry fits together the spiritual and the martial or political- in the way that these two do fit together- by analogy. The conjunction of Christian and martial virtues is formed in the brief Christian period of the empire, 313-476 A. D. Arthur occurs long before Charlemagne, just at the end of the Roman empire when Britain had been separated from ancient Rome, and the “Dark Age” descends onto the area that was in Europe of what was the western Roman empire. Prior to Constantine, the Roman knights were not Christian, and medieval chivalry as Christian developed especially in Christian Britain, on the fringes of the empire. Chivalry occurs as one way of fitting together the spiritual and the political. The spiritual things of the light in man are joined to martial virtue, resulting in “ethical” virtue. Direct theoretical and practical wisdom seem to be replaced by loyalty and obedience, suitable to the spirited and honor seeking part of the soul. Ethical virtue is related to the virtues of the mind by analogy- and so St. George slays the dragon and frees the maiden, somewhat as does the soul ascending past the fear of death out of the cave prison or muddy vesture of decay. Justice, Courage, liberality, magnanimity and moderation or chastity are assumed in the meaning of what is honorable. The oppressed are protected from the strong by the martial virtue of those genuinely best, a natural aristoi.
Our argument will be that Dugin in his Russian-ism advocates tyranny and not aristocracy or chivalry, that the regime and orders are those of a beast and not our image of the best of medieval knights. Apparently, this needs to be said. The Russian argument presents all alternatives to the vices of “democracy” as aristocratic or noble, failing to distinguish the 6 or 7 kinds of regime, and establishing tyranny- a vast degeneration from democracy or the democratic republic.*
But the analogy leads to materialization, and then they literally try to take Jerusalem. In the Revelation, there are no earthly armies battling the beast with Jesus, but 10, 000 of his saints returned. Empire itself- including any Christian, “Judeo-Christian” or Abrahimic empire appears in light of the Babylon of Daniel- as a series of beasts.
The term “chivalry” derives from the Old French term chevalerie, which can be translated as “horse soldiery”.[Note 1] Originally, the term referred only to horse-mounted men, from the French word for horse, cheval, but later it became associated with knightly ideals. Cavalry are few, infantry many. The cavalry are those of the oligarchs, the money seekers, who had the leisure for education- martial and music. The poor cannot afford a horse. Of these are drawn the best of the police and soldiers upholding the nation in domestic and foreign matters.
Largesse or Liberality: generosity was part of a noble quantity. According to Alan of Lille, largesse was not just a simple matter of giving away what he had, but “Largitas in a man caused him to set no store on greed or gifts, and to have nothing but contempt for bribes.”[39]
Mercy to defeated enemies is a part of chivalry. War is not to enact vengeance but to prevent oppression, or the violation of rights the government is obliged to protect- though they had kings, then.
Wiki: “According to William Manchester, General Douglas MacArthur was a chivalric warrior who fought a war with the intention to conquer the enemy, completely eliminating their ability to strike back, then treated them with the understanding and kindness due their honour and courage. One prominent model of his chivalrous conduct was in World War II and his treatment of the Japanese at the end of the war. MacArthur’s model provides a way to win a war with as few casualties as possible and how to get the respect of the former enemy after the occupation of their homeland.[70] On May 12, 1962, MacArthur gave a famous speech in front of the cadets of United States Military Academy at West Point by referring to a great moral code, the code of conduct and chivalry, when emphasizing duty, honour, and country.[71]“
Chivalry does not harm civilians, defeated opponents, and protects the honor of ladies-i.e., women, and of course children. The murder and rape occurring in Ukraine betrays the lack or anything but appearance in the use of the human to cover the beast of tyranny. The terror of limitless cruelty is simply used for what appears a tactical advantage to the cold calculator, but is not even cruelty well used, and will seal the defeat of these.
The ideas of chivalry are summarized in three medieval works: the anonymous poem Ordene de chevalerie, which tells the story of how Hugh II of Tiberias was captured and released upon his agreement to show Saladin (1138–1193) the ritual of Christian knighthood;…
…[15] the Libre del ordre de cavayleria, written by Ramon Llull (1232–1315), from Majorca, whose subject is knighthood;[16] and the Livre de Chevalerie of Geoffroi de Charny (1300–1356), which examines the qualities of knighthood, emphasizing prowess.[17]
Kenelm Henry Digby wrote his The Broad-Stone of Honour for this purpose, offering the definition: ‘Chivalry is only a name for that general spirit or state of mind which disposes men to heroic actions, and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual and moral world’.
The inspiration by the feminine beautiful to the masculine noble is how love inspires cultivates and perfects the virtues by nature.
Chivalry! – why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection – the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant – Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.
—Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1820)
Cavalry are few, infantry many. The cavalry are those of the oligarchs, the money seekers, who had the leisure for education- martial and music. The poor cannot afford a horse. Of these are drawn the best of the police and soldiers upholding the nation in domestic and foreign.
These are those who lay down their lives for their friends every time they punch the clock- Those who are superior to, or in struggle with, the fear of death, etc, and they conquer this, and the enemy by the way.
Russia had Cossacks, and even a noble prince or two, but did not have medieval chivalry as this developed in Europe.
* The pre- Socratics distinguish government by the one, few and many, as in Herodotus. Plato, Aristotle and the Socratic thinkers distinguish 6, dividing the three according to whether the ruling body aims at the common good or the advantage of the stronger ruling element. so these are 1) Of the one, kingship and tyranny, Of the few, Aristocracy and oligarchy, and 3) of the many, democracy and a form called “polity,” or constitutional democracy.
Though these are first the orderings of single cities, they are also the archetypes of the city and soul, and so pertain to politics in the nations as well, if in a qualified way and a wider dimension. Hereditary aristocracy is a derived meaning of the true word, which simply means the rule of the best. Election is of the best, and mixes aristocracy with democracy and the Athenian choice by lot is a degeneration.
In Plutarch’s Lycurgus, we see an example of nobility in war in the laws of Sparta. Plutarch writes:
After they had routed the enemy, they pursued him until they were well assured of the victory, and then they sounded the retreat, thinking it base and unworthy of a Grecian people to cut men to pieces who had given up and abandoned all resistance. This manner of dealing with their enemies did not only show magnanimity, but was politic, too; for knowing that they killed only those who made resistance,and gave quarter to the rest, men generally thought it their best way to consult their safety by flight.”
Dryden ed p. 67
Draft in progress:
1986 Notes to prepare for an exam
The Question:
In what way is the regime described in Plato’s Republic impossible, and in what way or ways is it “not impossible that it come to pass” (499 d)?
Plato has sometimes been taken or mistaken as offering a blueprint for the construction in action of a regime such as that described when Socrates constructs the city in speech in the Republic. As described, the regime includes the abolition of private property and of the family. The attachment of men to what is their own would have to be overcome. And in order to bring the regime into being, philosophers would have to rule as kings, overcoming the tension between philosophy and the city. In his Interpretive Essay on The Republic, Allan Bloom states that in the dialogue itself, “The perfect regime is revealed to be a perfect impossibility” p. 409. Rather than a blueprint for an actual regime, The Republic is “The greatest critique of political idealism ever written” (p. 408).[Note 1]
I. Introduction
The question of the best regime is at the core of political philosophy not because it provides a literal plan according to which cities are to be directly ordered, but rather because the city in speech can reveal the true ordering or natural hierarchy of the soul. By showing the natural hierarchy of the soul, the articulation of the best regime as undertaken in the Republic guides the pursuit of the best life not primarily for a city but for a man. It is impossible to construct a city in deed using the city in speech in Republic as a plan, but the order of soul analogous to it is possible, more so as it is here revealed, as will be shown.
At the conclusion of Book IX of the Republic (592), Socrates and Glaucon agree regarding the man who is intelligent, that he will mind the political things of the city in speech whose foundations they have gone through, which has its existence in speeches, but will not mind the political things of his fatherland, unless some divine chance coincidentally comes to pass. Glaucon says that he doesn’t suppose that this city exists anywhere on earth. Socrates responds that “perhaps in heaven a pattern is laid up for the man who wants to see and found a city within himself on the basis of what he sees.” The founding of the regime within the soul is the primary purpose of the city in speech of the Republic.
Socrates suggested the founding of the city in order to come to the assistance of justice when it was being spoken of badly, undertaking to show that justice by itself is advantageous for an individual, and so preferable to injustice regardless of the benefits that can be acquired by injustice. Socrates there compared their situation to that of men who do not see sharply, ordered to read small letters from far off. To them it would appear as a godsend if they were able to consider the smaller letters after having first read the larger letters in a larger place, if these bigger letters were of the same form. It is in order to see justice in the soul that Socrates and the other participants in the dialogue undertake the founding in speech. It is an attempt to see the soul “writ large” in the polity, seeing the same form (eidos) as through two writings of a word that is the same.
2.
The bigger and the smaller are again mentioned regarding poetry. Socrates says that speeches have a double form, one true and the other false. Those to be educated are to be given both, but first the false. Then in the discussion of the supervising of those who make tales, this opposition becomes that between the “greater” and the “smaller” tales. “In the greater tales, we’ll also see the smaller ones” (377c). Both the greater and the smaller are to be taken from the same model and have the same “power.” The tales told by Homer and Hesiod are examples of the greater tales, cosmic, mythic, epic. Objection is here raised to these because they are bad representations of what heroes and gods are like. In the discussion, they go on to purge the tales of the poets. Socrates replaces the poetry of Homer and Hesiod with the articulation of the best regime as the greater tale, the image, in which to see the littler, the soul. That the greater and smaller correspond to the false and true in the double form of speeches, would seem to suggest that the speech about the best regime is false, while the reality to which it refers, in the soul, would be the true form.
According to the principle of the founding, the city in argument is made to look like the soul of one man. That means that the city will be treated as though it were a natural being. By the end of the third book, all the legislation for the regime is nearly completed, the three classes of the city that correspond to the three parts of the soul are present. The three classes of the soul were introduced in progression, by the introduction of what can be called three progressive cities. The first called the healthy city, was a city of artisans, each practicing one art for which he was most fitted by nature, so that the whole city approached self sufficiency. But Glaucon, famously, objects to the lack of luxuries in this simple city, and with the addition of luxuries, the city became feverish. The size of the city is no longer sufficient to support these luxuries. From luxury war comes into being, or, the feverish human desires, exceeding the animal limits are the cause of war. There is a marked similarity to the Biblical fallen man, as well as to the ascent from the simplicity of childhood to the confusion of adolescence. From war, a warrior guardian class arises in the city, and must also have been repeated as human cities arise. Through the education in music and gymnastics of this class of the warriors the feverish city is purged. The souls of the guardians are harmonized, made moderate and courageous.
From these guardians the rulers are then chosen, not according to intelligence, but those who are the most skillful guardians of the conviction that one must do what is best for the city, believing that the same things are advantageous to both himself and the city. Strangely, this power of preserving is later called courage, a virtue attributed to the spirited rather than the reasoning part of the soul.
3.
This first hierarchy of the regime is to be solidified by the myth of metals in the noble lie. According to this, the founders will attempt to persuade, at best even the rulers, but if not these, at least the rest of the city, that the education they were given was as a dream, while what was actually happening to them during this time was that they were under the earth being fashioned and reared until the earth, which is their mother, sent them up. And so they must defend and love the city as though it were their mother. This part of the lie tells the citizens that they are brothers, so that the city is not as a city, but a single family. The second part of the lie is that the god mixed gold into the souls of those able to rule, silver into the souls of the auxiliaries, and iron and bronze into the farmers and craftsmen. At this point in the dialogue the three classes of the regime, corresponding to the three parts of the soul, are established. The noble lie is thought fantastic. But soon the interlocutors come to believe the allegory of the cave- a story about philosopher kings born out of the earth.
The noble lie is an attempt to cover over, among other things, the difficulty of the disharmony between the private interests of men and the common interest or common good. Just after the lie is presented, Socrates introduces the first mention of the communism of the city, saying that the guardians will have no private property or houses. Their dedication to the polis is to be complete. The guardian’s sacrifice, of their own wealth and privacy in dedication to the polis is to be complete.
Here Adeimantus objects that Socrates is not making the guardians happy. While the city belongs to them, they enjoy nothing good from the city as others do, things such as lands and houses, gold and silver, and all that is conventionally held to belong to men who are to be “blessed.”
Socrates does not yet respond, as he will later, that the guardians will be happier than Olympic victors because they preserve the virtue of the whole city. Socrates here rather explains that in founding the city, they were not looking to the happiness of any one group in it, but rather to the happiness of the whole city. The city is treated as an organism, as a natural being, according to the analogy of its founding, as Socrates here reminds Adeimantus. Socrates answers with an analogy, asking Adeimantus to suppose that they were painting statues and someone objected that they were not using the fairest color, purple, the royal color, to paint the fairest part of the animal, the eyes. Socrates explains that their apology to this man would be that they ought not paint the eyes so fair that they do not even look like eyes. Rather, by assigning what is suitable to this part, make the whole fair or beautiful. The sighted part of the regime does not establish nous as the ruling element, but, as the rulers are chosen being the best guardians of a civic opinion, the city is ruled by opinion. In books V-VII, the statue receives the royal color, as the philosopher replaces the guardians at the head of the city.
Aristotle, in his Politics, agrees with Adeimantus (Bloom, p. 370), saying that it is impossible for the whole city to be happy unless most or all, or at least some of its parts are happy. Aristotle presents himself as disagreeing with the communism regarding property simply because what is held in common gets less care (Politics, III. iii), and especially because to abolish private property would deprive men of the great pleasure of doing kindnesses to friends Aristotle chooses rather an arrangement in which property is private, while laws are made to dispose men to use property in common.
The objection of Adeimantus holds even if one does not regard wealth and all that is conventionally held to make men happy to be what truly makes them so. According to the analogy between the city and the soul, the craftsmen of the city must lead a life of the appetites while being restrained to moderation by accepting the rule of the guardians. If the city as it exists were an image of the just and happy soul, the craftsmen would not be just or happy. The warriors are cut off from both the goods of the body and the mind, being ignorant of the highest things and of their own ignorance (T. West). If the auxiliaries are to make up the spirited element of the city, they must themselves be spirited men, ruled not by their own reason, but by that of the rulers. And what of the rulers themselves? They are able to give good council about the affairs of the whole city, but does the activity of the calculative part of the soul suffice for the happiness of the rulers? These are, if possible, under the noble lie themselves and do not inquire into the truth about the most important things. While they might rule the city rationally, they are not yet themselves ruled by intelligence but by opinion regarding the highest things. It remains to be considered how this might effect their ability to give counsel. In comparison with the philosophic life described in Books V-VII, the life of these rulers would be a shadowy and dimly lit existence, and the philosopher does not yet have a place in this city. The happy soul thus cannot yet live in the regime constructed to be an image of then happy soul. The philosophic life is based on escaping from the cave, in which men believe the noble lies on which political life seems founded. There is thus some question as to the harmony or disjunction between the nature of man and the city.
Justice as complete dedication to the common good has not yet been shown to secure happiness for the individual. Allan Bloom suggests that Socrates may here be more interested in revealing the problem of what it is in men that makes complete dedication to the city impossible (p. ). The needs of the body are the sources of the attachment of men to what is their own, their own possessions, families and customs. Private homes and property are needed because men have bodies and attachments to their possessions. “But,” Bloom states, “the concentration on the public and the common, the forgetfulness of the demands of the body, prepares the way for the introduction of philosophy…the guardian who is totally devoted to the common good is the prototype of the philosopher who is devoted to knowing the good” (p. 371).
The three part city and the soul that corresponds to it are not yet complete. The three parts of the soul does not tell the full story. The most important sense in which the city cannot be analogous to the individual man is that the city “cannot reproduce, nor can it philosophize. All forms of eros are cut off from it” (Bloom, p. 376). The abstraction from the body necessary for complete dedication to the common good is accompanied by the abstraction from eros of any sort. Without questioning the order of rank by which the guardians are higher than the craftsmen or money-makers, Leo Strauss indicates the questionable-ness of ranking desire as such below spiritedness ( The City and Man, p. ). Eros ranges from the desire for immortality through beautiful offspring, through the desire for immortality through fame to the longing for immortality through the participation by knowledge in things that are unchangeable. The calculation of the rulers in the beautiful city is not the erotic striving for the first principles that characterizes the rational eros.
Almost as a miscellaneous item, in the fourth book, Socrates mentioned that “The possession of women, marriages and the procreation of children must as far as possible be arranged according to the proverb that friends have all things in common.” At the time, Adeimantuus agreed, and the discussion went on to search for justice in the city, then to separate out the parts of the soul and search for justice in the soul. At the conclusion of Book Four, Socrates and his companions had found justice in both the city and soul- defined as minding one’s own business, which keeps the parts of the city and soul harmonized and in order, and justice was shown to be profitable as the health of the soul. The task imposed on Socrates has been completed. Socrates was then about to describe the four other kinds of regime, those which are taken up after the digression following the center of the dialogue. But then, in a scene that re-enacts the arrest at the opening of the dialogue, Polemarchus whispers to Adeimantus, who stops Socrates and accuses him of robbing them of a whole section of the argument. He wants to know more about this statement that regarding women and children, the things of friends will be held in common.
Socrates restates the question of the particular manner of the communism, saying it could be doubted whether these things he will say are possible, and even if they could come into being, if they would be best. He hesitates to go into the argument fearing that it might seem to be a prayer. He says he fears slipping in the argument and dragging friends down with him. Socrates prostrates himself before Adistrea, the god who punishes the immoderate and arrogant, for what he is about to say.This is because, through the course of the argument in Book V, the proposals of Socrates will imply an attack on “all existing cities and their most sacred laws” (Bloom, note 6 to Book V).
Before discussing the communism regarding women and children, Socrates says he must go back and say what should have been said earlier in the argument, completing the female drama after the male. The same education or first wave is an implicit part of the guardian regime as already founded. [note. This was a question discussed in essays in the US in the 1830’s, without the benefit of the discussion of Socrates here, as in the famous essay of Emma Willard, and the whole inauguration speech of John Tyler. The discussion was a precursor to the general movement for the vote and general equal, based there on Genesis 1:26. Socrates here is the first in history known to seriously suggest such a thing, as Jesus is also the first to teach women.] It is interesting to find that after the three parts of the soul were separated out, painted with their virtues and harmonized, still the classic picture of the three part soul was incomplete, lacking what would be another part, were it not more an aspect. One might even wonder if justice would still be profitable with eros added.
So Socrates states, in what is known as the first of three waves, that the male and female guardians must have the same education. Socrates indicates: ” compared to what is customary, many of the things now said would look ridiculous if they were to be done as is said.” The proposals of Socrates in Book V are said to require the complete upheaval of custom The most ridiculous thing about the first, Socrates says is both the younger and older women exercising naked with the men. In a section which recalls another aspect of the story of Herodotus regarding Gyges and Candules, Socrates reminds them that once it seemed shameful to the Greeks, as now it does to the Barbarians, to see men naked. But then it became clear to the Greeks that to “uncover all such things is better than to hide them, and, “what was ridiculous to the eyes disappeared in light of what is best as revealed in speeches. This showed, he says, that “one is empty who believes anything to be ridiculous other than what is good, por who sets up any standard of beauty other than the good ( ).
Socrates next raises and defeats the counterargument that it is ” “not fitting to prescribe the same work to men and women because the two have different natures.” Facing this argument, Socrates answers that whether one falls into a little swimming pool or into the middle of the biggest sea” he swims all the same.He says they thus must swim and try to save themselves from the argument, while hoping that some dolphin will take them on his back or for some other unusual rescue.” The allusion is to the story of Arion brought to shore on the back of a dolphin, after escaping capture by Pirates, by the charm of his lyric poetry.
The unusual rescue apparently comes by separating what is said out into its terms, so to avoid unwillingly dealing in contradiction.Men and women are said not to differ regarding any practice connected with the government of cities- such as the raising of children from the time of birth to the time of education ( v, ) so that with respect to their practicing their art in the city they are said to have the same nature regarding their civic art. The unessential difference that the female bears and the male mounts is compared to the difference between bald and long haired men. The unusual rescue from the necessity implied by the argument that women have different natures is overcome by abstracting explicitly from the body and the difference between male and female souls due to the body.
In this way the institution of the same education for thew male and female guardians is show to be possible in the sense that it is not against nature. But if the body is a part of nature, the institution will be against nature and so neither possible or best. That it would be best is agreed quickly, simply by indicating that as the male guardians are best among the citizens due to their education, so the women will be the best among women. It is concluded that the female guardians must strip, and clothe themselves in virtue rather than robes.
In passing by what is customary, the nakedness of the female guardians is emphasized. In this section of the argument introducing the first two waves,into the discussion, the analogy between city and soul seems very important As in the story of Gyges in Herodotus, the stripping of clothing to reveal the beautiful form of the naked queen is an analogy of the stripping away of conventions in the philosophic or intellectual eros to know. There is some similarity between thew image of the first two waves and Shakespeare’s image in the Tempest, where after a hard swim, Ferdinand lands on the magic island., thinks the king his father to be dead, and himself king, and is shown thew beautiful Miranda. The argument of Book IV separating out the parts of the soul was also called a hard swim through. In the Tempest, the spirited prince is introduced to the beautiful Miranda, and through her reconciled to the philosophic rule of Prospero. In the Republic, the female guardians are added to their class even though spirited women may be rare. [Their virtue may have to exceed all males of the craftsmen and farmers. There are as yet no women in major league baseball, and nothing like a half a class even in the minor leagues- apparently due to differences in the body.]
As the dialogue moves toward the discussion of marriages, the drama of the invisible dialogue regarding the soul moves toward the birth of intelligence (nous).
The upheaval of custom in prescribing the same education and art for the female guardians as for the male is, “meant to bring about the order according to nature,” abstracting from procreation and rejecting the customary difference between men and women according to the demands of justice that each practice the art for which they are fitted by nature. In this discussion, “possible” is equated with “by nature.” The city of the Republic is treated as though it were a natural being, as is a man or the human soul. The city derives its dignity from the life of the mind or soul of man, and the natural foundation of rule within the city is based ultimately on the rule of intellect. But can a city exist by nature , rejecting convention, and translating the natural order of the soul directly into the political orders of the best regime? It may be because the city of the Republic is meant to be “by nature” that it is impossible rather than possible.
The second wave, called bigger than the first, is the communism regarding women and children. Because of great doubts regarding whether it is best or possible- but especially whether it is possible-Socrates tries to escape the question of its [possibility altogether, saying that they don’t suppose it would be doubted possible if it were best.When unable to escape, Socrates asks if it would be allowed to presuppose its possibility and consider how the rulers will arrange it,and whether it will be best for the city and the guardians.
[It is noted that these orders are for a small class of a single city, and for even a whole city, let alone a nation. Societies of priests might find such things possible, having set aside the body and family as a whole for the devotion of their service. It would remain only to effect such orders for about 1000 in a city of 100,000, for warriors and police, guarding the public trust as Eunuchs guarded the wives and harems of the Persian kings. The question is whether it is best for both the guardians and the city, or whether, the best regime too is not from top to bottom composed of happy families.]
Beneficial marriages will be made sacred. In explaining what this means, Socrates recalls to Glaucon his own practice of animal breeding, in which the breeder breeds from the best animals as much as possible. As was the argument in the education of the women guardians, that only what is useful is noble and only what is bad is laughable. So here Socrates subordinates the sacred to the beneficial, or equates the two, rejecting the sacred conventions. The rulers will use many lies in instituting a system of eugenics in which the citizens are bread like animals to produce the best offspring. [And here we must ask, is not nature’s eugenics in love harsh enough! Whatever else occurs in love, it both depends upon and inspires the cultivation of every excellence, aiming toward the prince and princess by nature.] The citizens, though, must believe that the particular marriages brought about are due to chance, and only the rulers themselves are to notice what is occurring, if the guardian’s herd is to be kept as free as possible from faction. In addition, more frequent intercourse is to be given as a prize to those guardians best in war, so that under this pretense, these men will have the most offspring.
When the offspring are born, they are to be taken to a milking pen, while any of those born deformed will be hidden away in an unspeakable and unseen place. In all this, great care must be taken so that none of the women recognize their own offspring. The claims of maternal love are simply silenced, with perfect and precise control of human unions by reason. Erotic necessities must be treated with the precision of geometric necessities. If such mastery is impossible then so is the city, and it is due to the on this issue that the regime is presented as beginning to deteriorate ( ).
There is to be no love or families among the guardians. The entire city is to become as a single family. Precautions are minimal against what is incest according to the usual human filial relations of parents and children, brothers and sisters, and each citizen is to address every other with family names, such as father and mother etc.,and act toward them accordingly. There is some similarity to the chivalric courtesy,. which treats all maidens as sisters, etc.
3. Best
In determining whether or not this is best, to abolish the family and breed human beings as animals, Socrates sets down the principle that the greatest good for a city is unity, while faction is the greatest evil. The best governed city is said to be most like a single human being. This unity is said to be brought about by the community of women and children, and consists in the circumstance that all say my own and not my own about the same things. They all rejoice and are pained by the same births and deaths, and it is this community of pain and pleasure, which binds the city together, while it is said that the privacy of such things dissolves the unity. This community of pain and pleasure is compared to the community tying body and soul together into a single being. “in a single arrangement under the ruler within it.”since the community of women and children brings about the unity of the city in which each of the citizens holds what is their own to be the same,binding it together into a community of pain and pleasure that is like that within a single human being, and this unity is held to be the greatest good for the city. the community of women and children is agreed to be the best.
4. More Blessed than Olympic Victors
Socrates points out that many evils of other cities which this one will be rid of due too its making public things which are private in the other cities. Socrates now claims that the guardians will live a life “more blessed than Olympic victors,” reminding of the punishment proposed by Socrates at his trial. Their victory is the preservation of the whole city, and they are crowned with support and everything else necessary for life. Socrates now claims that the private good of the guardians is achieved by their complete devotion to the common good, being entirely the artisans of the city’s freedom. Finally, Glaucon agrees that, regarding the entire arrangement of the city, “they’ll do what is best, and nothing contrary to the nature of the female in her relationship with the male, and nothing contrary to the natural community of the two with each other.
5. Aristotle’s critique on unity.
In the critique of the second wave by Aristotle (Politics, II. v), he writes that this institution is certainly possible, but questions whether it is best. In treating the proposal of Socrates as a blueprint for an actual city, Aristotle is said to take literally a great Socratic irony.
Aristotle first indicates the questionable-ness of the assumption of Socrates that the greatest unity is the greatest good for the city. Making the city first into a household instead of a city, and then into one ,man instead of a family or household, would bring the destruction of the polis. Aristotle states that it is not unity, but self-sufficiency which is the good of the polis. It is in pure thought, and not in the city, that unity is possible. The tendency toward unity is characteristic of reason, and the nature of man is rational, and so tends toward unity. But the city has to do with bodies and, the argument goes, bodies cannot be made one. The Republic thus forces a distinction between the nature of man and the city, by treating the city as though it were natural and showing what would follow from this. In this way, the Republic shows the limits of politics with respect to the body and things by nature better left private. The radical experiment of making the whole of the life of man political shows the limits of the polis with respect to the household. It is the parallel between the soul and city which has led Socrates to make the city into what is like one man, bringing the “littler and bigger” together at this point. If the city is by nature, then this would be possible. But because the city is not by nature, it is impossible. If the city is not by nature, there is not a form of the city, apparently, as there is a form of man. So, the best regime as described in speech exists nowhere in nature.
The things of the body then would seem, according to Aristotle, to be left private. The temptation to establish communism in actual regimes would be a bodily expression of intellectual unity The Marxist end envisioned might betray itself as a perversion of the Christian heaven or Paradise, calling for something like the forced establishment of the heavenly communion of souls, or the communism of friends in sharing. Equity is only a small part of justice, and equity in goods a small part of that, but justice is said to be the whole of virtue in relation to others. As in the account of Cyrus regarding the two boys and two coats (Xenophon, Cyropaideia, ). the regime which seeks the things of the soul in bodily things is willing to use force on men who ought be free men for the sake of establishing equity regarding bodily goods. In appealing from conventional property rights to natural property right or what is fitting for each, Cyrus may advocate a greater injustice in service of a lesser justice, sanctioning tyranny, by his ability to achieve a lesser justice by force.
The beehive is a natural unity, in truth making a community into what is as a single organism- the Queen and drones being as the reproductive organ of the whole, while the workers lack such individual purpose. One would like to see the decision making process within the hive, as when a new site for the honey is chosen from among alternatives. One would also like to see how these organisms- whole hives and ant colonies, managed to emerge through intermediate phases, and whether such a development could occur regarding man. The hive and polis are distinct too in that the hive is made, it is made by nature without essential accidental variation in every case, as occurs regarding human laws, which are made by men, as is the hive, but not as is the hive, made by nature.
If the Athenians had come to Plato or Socrates and asked them to be the King of Athens, would they have abolished all things private including the family, and instituted eugenics as some perverse scientist suggest today? Or would these have agreed with us, thinking these things terrible and perverse? The only examples of attempts to abolish the family are examples of the extreme tyranny, such as that of Pol Pot in Cambodia. From these, it seems obvious enough that the city in speech is not intended to be a blueprint for an actual city.
[Other examples to be considered are Plato in Syracuse- where he lost favor with the tyrant Dionysus due his proposal to abolish private property. In his seventh Letter, we see the posture of Plato toward practical politics, and a restatement of the circumstance of Socrates regarding the thirty.Lycurgus in Sparta also instituted the first wave, and the Spartans have some rather strange habits regarding marriage and adultery. The Amazons achieved the same warrior work for women, and became quite formidable, even attacking Athens under Theseus and Ageus. Communism of property, too, is held among the first Christians in the Acts (4:2) though again this is easy- or easier- for those who plan to set aside the body, and need not feed and house families.]
Socrates avoids the question of the possibility of the institution of the common possession opf women and children as long as possible, by taking Glaucon through a discussion of war that seems a digression. When they return to the question of the possibility of this second wave, has somehow changed from that of whether it is according to nature, which determined the the possibility of wave 1 and has been agreed to regarding wave 2, into the question of how one might transform an actuality into the manner of regime as they have constructed in speech.
As distinct from their procedure in the first wave, in which possibility and best were considered separately. wave 3 is introduced in answer to the possibility of wave 2. For some reason, Socrates here regarding the second wave and not the first,establishes the distinction between perfect justice and what can come into being, and the says that it was “for the sake of a pattern” that they were seeking for what justice itself is and what the perfectly just man would be like if he should come into being, and for injustice and the most unjust man, and then to compare these to happiness, rather than seeking these for the sake of proving that it is possible for them to come into being. He compares their articulation of the city again to a painter who paints thew most beautiful human being, and says that he is no less good a painter if he cannot prove that it is possible for what he paints, or “such a man” to come into being. On the assumption that it is the nature of action or deeds to be less precise than speaking, Socrates persuades Glaucon not to compel him to present the city as coming into being in every way in deed as it is described in speech If they are thus able to find a city that could be governed in a way most closely approximating what is said, then, Socrates tells Glaucon, say that the possibility of these things coming into being has been found.” They look for the smallest change, one if not two, if not, then the fewest in number and the smallest in power by which a city would come to this manner of regime.
If the regime described in the city of the Republic can come into being primarily within one man, then for this man to be king- in a suitable regime- may bring about inwardly the impossible institutions of the first two waves, and this would be that “smallest” change. At any rate, it is not clear that the institution of the philosopher kings is not, as Strauss writes, not only the necessary but the sufficient cause to bring about this regime (p. 186). [The orders ascribed to the city would reign invisibly in the ruling soul, whatever appeared when the visible things are governed by prudence. An example might be if Shakespeare had been born king.]
[In this light, the trans Athenian pan-Hellenic digression (470 c-e) appears anew. Are these not practical measures Socrates would institute if he were governing the Athenians? War and enslavement are moderated, but most especially he introduces an assumption of something like a Greek nation, naming war between cities faction. It does seem clear enough that the Greeks ought unite in defense against the other nations, rather than wasting one another. What if Alcibiades and Athens had listened to Socrates? When Alexander does what Alcibiades might have done, it appears what political philosophy faced at the turn of the fourth century B.C., what might have been, and the destruction of Greece that occurred instead. The age of the polis was giving way to the age of the nation, and Socrates could have combined Sparta and Athens into a national federation that would at least preserve the libraries.]
So it seems likely an intentional irony when, introducing the third wave, in response to the question, “What change?” Socrates says, “Well, here I am…”
The classic paragraph is worth repeating for its detail:
Unless, I said, philosophers rule as kings- or those now called kings and chiefs genuine and adequately philosophize, and political power and philosophy coincide in the same place, while the many natures now making their way to either apart from the other are by necessity excluded, there is no rest from ills for the cities, my dear Glaucon, nor, I think for human kind, nor will the regime we have now described in speech ever come forth from nature, insofar as possible, and see the light of the sun.
(Republic, 473 c-d)
The possibility of philosopher king also proves to be highly questionable. The example of the death of Socrates at the hands of Athens shows the problem and the tension between philosophy and the city. The city depends upon the strength of orthodoxy and custom, apparently for the virtue of citizens as citizens. But philosophy as an erotic striving for the first principles, the quest for truth and wisdom. As such, philosophy appeals from the customary beliefs about the cosmos and the best life for man, to the truth of nature, or, the natural articulation of things. The city does not understand the philosophers, and so will not consent to their rule. But would the philosophers ever use force to acquire rule. Even if they were able, this does not seem likely, since these do not desire power or rule. Those who seek wisdom do not desire power, and the city usually does not want the philosophers to rule, and so the best regime would seem to be impossible.
The drama of the dialogue continues to show philosophy governing. Socrates had feared that this, the biggest wave, would drown him in laughter and ill repute (473c). After the statement,Glaucon tells Socrates that he can believe that many men will on the spot strip for action and be ready to take up weapons and run at him to “do wonderful deeds,” Socrates answers that it is Glaucon who is responsible for this, and Glaucon tells Socrates that if they are going to defend themselves, they must distinguish for the attacking men who they mean by the philosophers, or who we mean when we dare assert that the philosophers must rule.” Socrates continues:
Thus, when they have come plainly to light one will be able to defend oneself, showing that it is by nature fitting for them both to engage in philosophy and to follow the leader.
Here as the dialogue turns to the discussion of the nature of the philosopher, which will occupy them through Book VII, we see most clearly what Eva Brann (Music of the Republic, 7a.) identifies as the way in which the best regime is “shown to come into being in the republic.” Socrates says to Glaucon, Come, follow me here, if we are somehow or other to set it forth adequately,” and Socrates reports Glaucon’s answer: “Lead, he said” (474c). We follow Socrates because he can follow the argument. So the third way that the regime is possible is as among the 10 in the dialogue.
After the discussion of the philosophers through Book VII, Socrates returns to insist that the regime is in a way possible. He asks Glaucon:
Do you agree that the things we have said about the city and regime are not in every way prayers; that they are hard but in a way possible; and that it is possible in no other way than the one stated, when the true philosophers, either one or more, come to power in a city, they will despise the current honors and believe them to be illiberal, and worth nothing. Putting what is right and the honors coming from it above all, while taking what is just as the greatest and the most necessary, and serving and fostering it, they will provide for their own city (540 d-e).
The way these will provide is then said to be to expel all those over 10 years old. This way is called the quickest and easiest, and Glaucon does not blink (541a). One wonders why, rather than colonize with third graders, they would expel the adults.
Averroes (On Plato’s Republic p. 72-73) notes the objection that the regime requires the education of the philosophers to come into being, so that these would consent, yet these cannot be educated until the philosophers rule, and so the regime is impossible. Averroes answers: It is possible for individuals to grow up with these natural qualities that we have attributed to them. This answer is related to the first sentence of the Meno, asking how one gains virtue.
The regime, then, is impossible as a blueprint, to be applied to any circumstance, yet possible in the soul of one man. It is also possible that this one should happen to rule, or even be followed by a nation or a people, as when the west adequately follows a Socrates or Shakespeare. It is also possible in the community of the dialogue, as we here see Socrates persuading the spirited Glaucon. It is also said that Socrates governs in the republic of letters, the semi-eternal community of thought and conversation, where it is possible for those in the past to converse even with those not yet born, in circumstances unforeseen. And the regime is accessible within each of our daily political circumstances, whenever these are improved even a little in light of what is best.
In Aristotelian terms, the conjunction of theoretical and practical wisdom must be possible. After the famous paragraph at the center of the Republic stating that philosophers must rule as kings, Socrates states: “For it is hard to see that in no other city would there be private or public happiness.” With his private concerns he cares for the public- which may turn out to be a very mysterious matter. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero cares for Italy, though, by setting his household rule in order. That Shakespeare shows a philosophic Duke, though, and not a king, may be related to the impossibility or undesirability of kingship even for the highest human being. The philosopher king is the principle, the example that shows happiness and the conjunction of theoretical and practical wisdom in the best man.
The parable of the ship assumes that political science is possible.
It is said that an idea is different from an “ideal,” in that its realization is in principle possible, because it is by nature. A perfect baseball diamond will be impossible to chalk, but the fulfillment of the natures in particulars ought be in principle possible. But the man and not the city is the natural being. Does a city ruled by wisdom become a natural being? That there is an idea of man may mean that the conjunction is possible, but then it may be that the best regime too must be in principle possible- if, unlike a blueprint, for almost all practical purposes impossible.
Another reason the city is impossible is that we do not have a wise man, or, the pursuit of wisdom is necessarily incomplete (Bloom). The parable of the ship, though assumes that knowledge of political things- symbolized in the astronomy and meteorology of the pilot’s art- is possible.
The argument that the expulsion of everyone over 10 would be required, or that the people to be made citizens must be wiped clean of all except childhood- with language assumed, seems to seal the impossibility, but one wonders about colonization. What if one were given an island and charged with the care of a shipwrecked school of third graders? One might have 4-6 years to prepare marriages.
Another is that philosophy and kingship do not coincide in time. Kingship belongs to the dawn of civilization, philosophy to its dusk (Strauss, The City and Man, p. )- though two civilizations could coincide, as in Shakespeare, had he happened to be born king.
Socrates next distinguishes the philosopher from the specialist as a lover of the whole of learning, rather than this or that particular.
While in the city. human beings are bred like animals in a picture of extreme ugliness, in the soul the sacred wedding refers to Zeus and Hera images of the union of male or paternal with female or maternal, in an image of great beauty Socrates may allude to this when he compares the community of pleasure and pain to “that community tying the body together with the soul in a single arrangement under the ruler within it.” The divine wedding is an archetype that appears in numerous ways in images and symbols, but in the Bible it is the wedding of the Bride and Lamb, fulfilling the “plan set forth for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians, 1:10). Carl Jung cites Paul as well as Iliad XIV (24?) among examples (Aion, p. 39-40; 204, 206).
The Strauss-Bloom thesis would seem to mean that this is not even a decent city, while Socrates insists that it and no other is the best regime.
Note 1: As stated by Hall, Strauss (The City and Man, p. 138) and others have recently revived an ancient reading of the Republic which asserts, as stated by Cicero: Plato in the Republic sought and made a city more to be prayed for than hoped for…/not such that it can possibly be, but one in which it is possible to see the meaning of political things. (Republic II.52) As cited by Allan Bloom, “Response to Hall,”). Against the modern interpretation which held that Plato thought it possible for the best regime to come into being in deed as it is described in speech, Strauss writes: The just city is impossible. By showing the impossibility of the best city, the Republic conveys the broadest and deepest analysis of political idealism ever made” (The City and Man, p. 127).
Aristophanes may be the first to treat theory of communism in writing, in his comedy the Assembly of Women. At the conclusion of his chapter on the Assembly of Women in his book on Aristophanes, Strauss writes enigmatically:
…Certain it is that Socrates’ correction or Prexagoras’ theme, which we find in the Republic, is not properly understood if one does not consider- against the letter of the republic, the difference of sex between Socrates and even the wisest woman: the scheme presented in the Republic is of altogether male origin.
Does Strauss attribute the turning the city into a household to a female motivation? Or is it the common possession of women that is especially the suggestion of a woman?
Socrates and Aristophanes, p. 282
Strauss treats the reason for the communism as egalitarianism, the principle of equality S&A, p. 280), while Bloom presents the cause as the overcoming of the love of ones own in the attachment rather to the city ( p. ).
Bloom: Is justice in the individual man the same as justice in the city?and does justice in the individual lead to good citizenship? First we look at the perfected city and then at the perfected man. Can a perfect man become and remain perfect in a perfect city? Is justice good for him? This is identical with the question: Is the city natural? For man and hence the good man is surely natural.
Socrates treats the city as though it were an organism, as though there could be a happy city without happy men (p. 370; Aristotle, Politics). The happiness of the individual is the end of the city, but the to attain this for many is better than to attain it for one, and so politics is of higher dignity than the private life ( ).
Interpretive Essay, p. 371…But the concentration on the public and the common, the forgetfulness of the demands of the body, prepares the way for the introduction of philosophy, which is the most universal concern. It is the concern with the private or particular as such that must be overcome if individuals are to philosophize and cities are to be ruled by philosophy. The guardian who is totally devoted to the common good is the prototype of the philosopher who is devoted to knowing the good.
Lycurgus…instituted an equal division of property, called in all coins, and instituted common meals, joining equality of goods with the aristocratic Spartan regime, and making the polis like a single household or family ( ), or even as a single man (p. 72). Lycurgus is said to be the first to separate out the soldiers as a class, imitating what he had seen during his travels in Egypt. But from Crete he brought a lyric poet Thales p. 51, and instituted a martial music:
The very songs which he composed were exhortations to obedience and concord, and the very measure and cadence of the verse, conveying impressions of order and tranquility, had so great an influence on the minds of the listeners, that they were insensibly softened and civilized, insomuch that they renounced their private feuds and animosities, and were united in a common admiration of virtue. Hence it may truly be said that Thales prepared the way for the discipline introduced by Lycurgus.
…When the army was drawn up for battle the king himself would begin the paeon of advance… It was at once a magnificent and a terrible sight to see them march on to the tune of their flutes, without any disorder in their ranks, any discomposure in their minds or change in their countenances, calmly and cheerfully moving with the music to the deadly fight. Men, in this temper, were not likely to be possessed with fear or any transport of fury, but with the deliberate valor of hope and assurance, as if some divinity were attending and conducting them.
(Lives, pp. 51-52)
This would be the Spartan or Doric music …Our martial music…
There is some question whether the defects of the Spartan regime are due to a degeneration or to the laws of Lycurgus himself. The slavery of the Helots was established, but he seems to have neglected the care of the question of the slaves. In Sparta as in the American South, the Aristocratic liberty from trades and farming seems to depend not only on the craftsman class, on slavery. In the United States, the freeing of the slaves occurs on the road toward the same education for men and women and political enfranchisement and equality. Following the institution of the Ephores, the Spartan treatment of the Helots includes “murder,” and involves a cruelty that reminds us of the degeneration of Aristocracy into timocracy, and the cruelty of which the character topped by the love of “honor” can be capable. Infanticide, too, is practiced, disposing of ill suited offspring, and this too seems to indicate a disregard for the law against murder.
The criticism too that the Spartan women were left to themselves, and ended up running the households while the men were at war, may refer to a later degeneration of the Spartan regime. Plutarch answers Aristotle:
The truth is, he took in their case also all the care that was possible,he ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies take firmer root…
Plutarch seems to comment on Plato’s Republic when he writes in his Lycurgus:
…these public processions of the maidens, and their appearing naked in their exercises and dancings, were incitements to marriage, operating upon the young with rigor and certainty, as Plato says, of love if not of of mathematics…(p. )
The seriousness of Eugenics and the nuptial number must also be addressed, as in modernity we seem to have jettisoned the distinction in kind between men and animals, and the prominence of biology unknown in ancient Greece has led one fuehrer to institute laws in this direction, if for a brief time. Marriages were once arranged by families, with consent arriving later with the root of political liberty, as appears too in the Bible, in the marriages of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Consent in marriages begins in sight and appearance, with wealth and worldly mastery the usual leading factor for the male. From the description in the Phaedrus, where each chooses a beloved after then god most according the character, one can see how it would be possible to turn the 3 part soul over to nature in the “love matters that concern the fair” which complete the formation of character ( ). Harry Jaffa, commenting on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, reminds that the arrangement of marriages is somehow central to the mystery of philosophic rule (Shakes. Universe, p. ). In the soul that is like the city, the community of goods and the stripping and the swim through the sacrifice of the root of the love of ones own at thew navel of our mortal origin seems to be what is alluded to, and one would compare the Elysian mysteries regarding the soul. Laws in Sparta and the Republic awarding great deeds with conjugal unions moves in the direction of complete control of love and marriages, but the nuptial number claims a mathematics over unions that are best. The failure of this number is even said to result in the degeneration of the regime, as though this were what held the whole together ( ). Once it is noted how animal breeders select the best, it is difficult to say why this should not be done, and the reason is apparently that the eugenics of nature in love is harsh enough. The mind does not govern the body in this way, but by the mediation of the soul.
Plato in the Seventh Letter tells the friends of Dion how at Athens he would have entered politics, though seeing that little could be done, he stayed out of the way, as the philosopher in the Parable of the Ship.
Plato Bibliography
2. _________. ________. Translated by Carnes Lord. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984
3. Averroes. Averroes on Plato’s Republic. Translated by Ralph Lerner. Cornell University Press, 1974.
4. Bloom, Allan. Interpretive Essay, in The Republic of Plato. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968
5. Bloom, Allan. “Response to Hall.” Political Theory, Vol. 5 no. 3, August, 1977.
6. Brann, Eva. The Music of the Republic. Annapolis, MD. :The Collegian Press, St. John’s College, n.d.
7. Burnyeat, M.F. “Sphinx Without a Secret.” New York Review of Books. May 30, 198530-36.
8. Cropsey, Joseph, et. al “The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange.” New York Review of Books October 10, 1985. 41-45.
9. Hall, Dale. “The Republic and the Limits of Politics.” Political Theory, Vol. 5 no. 3. August, 1977.
10. Plato, Apology of Socrates. In “Four Texts on Socrates, Edited and translated by Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West.
11. Strauss, Leo. The City and Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
12. ________. Socrates and Aristophanes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Draft in progress:
1984 Plato class paper
The quest for justice in Plato’s Republic is originated for the sake of Glaucon. Glaucon is the cause of their taking up the question of the comparative happiness of the just and unjust man. Socrates draws Glaucon into the discussion of Book I by saying that the good are not willing to rule for the sake of money or honor. He then addresses the question of the choice of the just or unjust life directly to Glaucon. Socrates asks him which speech he chooses as truer in his opinion, the speech of Thrasymachus, who asserts that the life of the unjust man is stronger, or the speech of the of the just man (347 e3). Glaucon chooses the life of the just man as being more “profitable.” He admits, though, that his choice is not made on the basis of knowledge. He thus persuades Socrates, or is persuaded to persuade Socrates, to defend justice against the unjust speech. Glaucon, who is “always most courageous in everything,” is the reason that Book I turns out to be only a prelude. Book II opens with Glaucon asking Socrates if he wants to have truly. or only apparently persuaded them by the arguments of Book I. The reason that Glaucon is not yet persuaded may be that while justice has been shown to be stronger than injustice both in speech (351a- 352b) and in deed (350 d3 and 350 e6, and 354 a3-4), it has not been shown to be more profitable than injustice. The reason may also be, as Socrates states at the conclusion of Book I, that they have left behind the question of what justice is to pursue the question of whether or not justice is vice and lack of learning or virtue and wisdom (354b).
In order to be truly persuaded that justice is to be chosen over injustice, Glaucon desires “to hear what each is and what power it has all alone by itself when it is in the soul- dismissing its wages and consequences” (358 b5). For this reason, says Glaucon, he will restore the argument of Thrasymachus for injustice. He thinks that Thrasymachus has been charmed more quickly than he ought have been. And so Glaucon will restore the argument of Thrasymachus in its strongest form.
The question is that of one’s true good or self interest. If one truly seeks his own advantage, will he choose to be just or to be unjust? The question does not even arise until after the innocence of Cephalus has disappeared. Justice becomes questionable in this way, regarding self interest, due to the emergence of philosophy. But there are men as Thrasymachus, who do not themselves go beyond the definition of justice as obedience to law, to whom justice appears highly questionable, and in fact false, or dis advantageous. Thrasymachus argued that obedience to law is obedience to the advantage of the stronger, and so one should choose disobedience, and especially choose to be the one who is obeyed, i.e., to be the ruler, and reap all that advantage for oneself. But Glaucon is the first to appeal explicitly from this conventional thesis regarding the nature of justice to the nature of one’s true advantage. This appeal to nature was left implicit in Book I because none of the three men questioned by Socrates see things in terms of the distinction between nature and convention. It is in this way that with the question of Glaucon, philosophy enters into their dialogue.
As Leo Strauss explains in The City and Man (p. 86), Thrasymachus was prevented from returning to nature due to his concern with his art. He is a sophist and teacher of rhetoric. He teaches men to speak “well” as a means to getting their advantage from political life. The activity of the Sophists is the “application to politics of what has come to be known as ‘pre-Socratic philosophy.” Bloom, Interpretive Essay, p. 338). The study of nature as pursued by the natural philosophers undermines the cosmic support of the laws of the city by undermining the poetic account of the “first things,” or the causes of things. The natural philosophers investigate nature and find that it is not the gods that are the causes of what comes to be. That there is no divine providence implies that one will not be struck by a thunderbolt of Zeus to balance the advantage one would gain from unjustly getting the better of someone. If one is enlightened regarding this, and applies the insight to political action, he sees that he could liberate his baser appetites without fear of the gods, and it appears that it is to his true advantage to take more than his fair share and get the better of other men. When the appetites are liberated from the yolk of ancestral custom, these enter into the sphere of political action. Rhetoric as persuasive speaking is well suited to their ends.
From the undermining of the ancestors, there are two roads open to the vigorous soul who seeks his true advantage. If the great soul thinks that injustice is advantageous to men,he will head toward tyranny. If he still inclines toward justice, he will incline toward philosophy Strauss referring to Xenophon, writes that we cannot exclude the possibility that Socrates descended to Piraeus in order to cure Glaucon of his extreme political ambition , as a favor to his brother Plato (The City and Man, p. 65).
A similar pattern of inquiry arises in Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides begins his account of the war with an account of the low origins of man, low rather than high or near to the gods (I. 1-10) and follows the undermining of the poetic account by natural philosophy (I. 22-23). From this beginning, Thucydides presents the progress of the city of Athens toward tyranny (from I. 72), through Perikles and Cleon to the desire for empire, the Melian dialogue and Alcibiades. But another progression is toward philosophy, in men as Demosthenes who chooses the private life, and Diodotus. Diodotus is shown defending the just action against a speech of Cleon before the Athenian council. His defense is entirely on the basis of the self interest of Athens.
This pattern is important to the question of Glaucon because Like Athens, Thrasymachus mistakes his own advantage. The city is called the greatest sophist (429a), and as Strauss writes, Thrasymachus plays the part of the city (The City and Man, p. 78; Republic 377 d-e; Bloom, “Interpretive Essay,” p. 307, 326, 377). The thesis of the city is that whatever it legislates is right and just. But if the city has a true good, such as the common good, then it’s laws ought aim at this good, which may be by nature right. When a city declares a mistake to be true regarding its own advantage, as Cleon does in arguing that for the advantage of Athens they ought disregard justice and put to the sword many of the revolted Mytileneans, the error regarding its own advantage requires a Diodotus to set aright.
Common opinion supposes, along with the natural philosophers, that one’s advantage is such that to do things just is in itself not in its own interest. In order for Glaucon to see, if it is true,that justice is good for man, a vision of the nature of man must come to light according to which it is good for a man to be just rather than unjust. The question depends upon the nature of man and his place in relation to thew city, to the community and the common good, and on the character of nature as a whole (Bloom, p. 338).
According to Aristotle, in his Ethics, a kind of justice in man is “complete virtue our excellence, not in an unqualified sense, but in relation to our fellow men” (1129 b26-28). The question of whether or not justice is to one’s own advantage implies the question of whether or not there is a harmony or agreement between the private good of an individual and the common good of the community. Only to the extent that the public good is synonymous with the private good- as when honorable men pursue civic honors for serving the city- will justice be profitable and one’s own good.
Glaucon attempts to clarify the question by distinguishing 3 kinds of good things and asking to which kind justice belongs: 1) Goods chosen for their own sake, as are harmless pleasures; 2) goods chosen both for themselves and their consequences, as are thought and sight and being healthy, and 3) things like exercise, and medical treatments, which are themselves a drudgery, but undergone for the sake of what comes of them. We say that knowledge is sought “for its own sake,” though it is hard to think of examples that are not also good for their consequences.
When asked, Socrates states his opinion, that justice is of the second kind, a thing to be chosen both for itself and for its consequences. But, Glaucon tells Socrates, it is the opinion of the many that justice is of the second kind, a thing good only for its consequences. Adeimantus later adds to the speech of Glaucon, telling how this is also the opinion of the fathers and the poets, that justice is a form of drudgery. Glaucon asks Socrates to show not his own opinion, that justice is good for both itself and its consequences, but that justice is of the first kind of good things chosen for themselves, like harmless pleasures. He asks to hear justice praised apart from any of its consequences, so that the opinion that justice is good only for its consequences will be shown false. Even thought Socrates’ opinion is that justice belongs to the second kind of good thing, Glaucon expects that he is most likely to hear the argument for choosing justice over injustice as he wants to hear it, from Socrates. If the justice of a man is inseparable from his public action, or his action toward the common good, this will be a difficult task (Strauss, The City and Man, p. 94 top). But in order to hear this, Glaucon will undertake the restoration of the argument of Thrasymachus for injustice. [Note 2]
Glaucon outlines his presentation in three parts. He will first explain what kind of thing justice is and what its origin is. Then from this account, he will show that all who practice justice do so unwillingly,as a necessary drudgery. Third he will show that it is fitting that men only do justice unwillingly, because the life of the unjust man is better than the life of the just man.
The study of nature of the natural philosophers looks to the coming to be of things the find the causes of the things which come into being, arise and pass away. Similarly, Glaucon supposes, for his unjust speech, that the nature of justice can be understood by examining and finding its origin. [Note 1] From this origin, according to the unjust speech, doing injustice and thus getting the better of those in the community is by nature good for the individual, and suffering injustice is naturally bad. Men emerge from the state of nature into civil society when the weak, to whom it seems profitable, make a contract to neither do nor suffer injustice. They “begin to set down their own laws and compacts and to name what the law commands lawful and just.” According to the weak men, justice appears as it did to Thrasymachus, to be what the law names as just. But in reality or truth, justice is, in its genesis and its being, “a mean between what is best- doing injustice without paying the penalty-and what is worst- suffering injustice without being able to avenge oneself.” Justice here precedes contract and law, and as a mean, it might be mistaken in legislation (Struass, The City and Man, p. 92 top). The mean between doing and suffering injustice would be “by nature,” as opposed to being something made. But the man who is strong and able to do more injustice than he suffers will neither observe the mean nor obey the contract. He will risk revenge and suffering injustice in order to seek the extreme of doing injustice. The man who is “truly a man,” as is the courageous Athenian Glaucon, will, in choosing the honor which goes with being able to consider oneself truly a man, choose injustice. Justice, or the mean is honored only by weak men due to weakness.
Leo Strauss indicates that The Republic is the only dialogue in which Socrates even dreams of “investigating the coming into being of the beings which participate in these virtues” (The City and Man, p. 92). The reason for this procedure- which will be taken up later in Book II, in founding the best city, is “perhaps” that “there is a particularly close connection between justice and the city, and while there is surely an idea of justice, there is perhaps no idea of the city (Ibid., p.92). The procedure of emphasizing the coming into being of the city in speech is imposed on Socrates by Glaucon here at the start of Book II. By this procedure, Socrates “compels us to raise the question of” whether or not the city is a natural being (Ibid., p. 93).
Glaucon no longer sees the founders as motivated by weakness when when he himself along with Adeimantus becomes a founder. Strauss indicates, “at the moment they begin to act as founders, they take the side of justice (CM, p. 93).” In the founding, we see the second picture of the origin of the city described.It is the true and healthy city in which justice is harmlessly pleasant as if it were a good of the first kind. In presenting this picture, Socrates in some sense satisfies the desire of Glaucon to see justice praised as a thing good in itself, though justice is shown in the city and not in the soul alone (Ibid., p. 94 top). Justice as this kind of good thing is shown to Glaucon so that his spiritedness, in the guise of the desire for luxury, rebels against it. The true city has its origin not in the fear of the weak men nor in the desire of the strong men to take advantage of them, but in the basic human needs. The bodily appetites, as distinct from desires for unnecessary things and the desire to have more, are the fundamental appetite.
The comedy of the best city originates in Socrates’taking the city to be of the same form as a man, and so to be natural. Glaucon’s thesis, the thesis of the unjust speech, is a comedy because it is impossible, and it is impossible because it is against nature. It is against nature to treat the city a natural, and in this- that the city is unnatural- the unjust speech is right- that is, accurate, or true. Yet, if man must come into cities in order to attain self-sufficiency, fulfilling natural needs, then the thesis of the unjust speech is wrong or false,in supposing that man is not by nature a political animal. Though the city be unnatural, man may by nature need a city. At the same time, though,the conclusion that the best city is impossible and comical because it is patterned after the soul of man implies that the Republic is serious as an account of the soul, or the nature of man. Socrates himself may have no problem living in a regime with any of the three waves introduced in Book V. He could wrestle naked without desire. The best city is perhaps an image of the soul as it ascends toward the love of wisdom.
But to return to the speech of Glaucon, the connection between the view of nature of the natural philosophers and the view of nature implied by the unjust speech is that the things which it supposes to be good all seek objects or goals which come into being and pass away. Such objects are scarce,and so competition for them will not be avoided. The private good of the individual cannot coincide with the common good if natural philosophy is right about the limits of nature. Natural philosophy is confined to the same ignorance as are all the men in Plato’s cave. But if the nature of advantage is as the unjust speech supposes, then injustice might be truly good by nature.
The city of Pigs, too is in the cave. But in order to restore the appetites to their natural and thus moderate limits,the excess passion must be freed from its imprisonment in the appetites, to ascend.
The second part of the presentation of Glaucon is to show that no one does justice willingly, but only from an incapacity to do injustice. This may be the opposite of the claim of Socrates in the Apology that no one does harm willingly, but only from an ignorance of their true advantage. The claim of Glaucon is that if two men, one just and one unjust,are given the license to pursue the objects of their natural desire, both will choose injustice. In order to show this, Glaucon is “compelled to use fiction based on myth.” (CM, p. 88). In order to see either perfect justice or perfect injustice, no examples from the imperfect world will do. For this reason it is only those who take their bearings by virtue who have use for the imagination and poetry, although it is only those who claim that virtue goes with justice rather than injustice who have the need to seek out “imaginary republics” (Machiavelli, The Prince, XV).
Glaucon recounts the tale of Gyges and the ring of invisibility in order to give both kinds of men the license needed to make the experiment. Gyges was a shepherd who stands in relation to his flock and the king as Thrasymachus, as rhetorician, stands between the rulers and the people. The license given by the invisibility in the tale is like the license given men from the combination of natural philosophy and the art of If there are no gods, or if they do not punish injustice, and if one can make oneself free of the bad reputation for injustice by persuading men that one is not unjust, one could avoid these consequences of injustice. Being unjust, one’s true being would be invisible. Glaucon holds that both the just and the unjust man would do as Gyges does in the tale- he committed adultery with the Queen and killed the king, usurping the throne. According to the unjust speech, anyone who who would do otherwise would be foolish, i.e., ignorant of the nature of things, and hence of his true advantage.
In the third part of the speech of Glaucon presenting the restored argument for injustice, he tries to show that the judgment about the life of these two cannot be made unless the just and the unjust men are set in opposition, each perfect in his own pursuit of justice or injustice. According to the account, the perfect unjust man is like a clever craftsman. He knows the limitations of his art, and does not attempt what is impossible. He will “attempt unjust deeds and get away with them. He will not get caught because “the extreme of injustice is to seem to be just when one is not” (361 b3). Perfect injustice remind us of the perfect artisan in Book I only here the perfection includes mistakes. “If he should trip up in any way, he is competent to set himself aright” (361 a3). The most important difference between this man and Thrasymachus may be that this man preserves his great reputation for justice. That he can “set himself aright” if he should “trip up” is repeated, but with the word “competent” replaced by “power” (361 b1). It may be that power is his art. If any of his unjust deeds come to light, he is “capable of both speaking persuasively” and of “using force.”
The just man set in contrast to this perfect unjust man is not a man of either courage or knowledge. He is a man “simple and noble,” who wishes to be rather than to seem “good.” All appearance of justice must be taken away. If he received rewards, Glaucon would not be able to tell whether or not he is just for for justice itself or for the rewards. He must be “stripped of everything except justice,” and made to have the greatest reputation for injustice He is to go on like this unchanged until death, being just but appearing unjust. These are the extremes of justice and injustice. Only at these two extremes can the judgement be made between the two regarding happiness. The just man will be whipped and racked and have his eyes burned out. In the end he will be crucified, and then he will know that one should wish to seem, rather than to be just. What Aeschylus said about the good man, Glaucon says is most true for the unjust man, that he “pursues a thing dependent on truth and does not live in the light of opinion.” wishing rather to be unjust than to seem unjust.
The crimes described above, in the example of the invisible man, rape and taking what belongs to others, are legitimized in the example of perfect injustice, becoming “marriages and “contracts.” In contests both public and private, he wins and gets the better of his enemies (who are all citizen and non-citizen competitors) as Thrasymachus wanted. In getting the better, he is wealthy and does good to friends and harm to enemies, as Polemarchus conceived justice to be. And like Cephalus, “to the gods he makes sacrifices and sets up votive offerings, adequate and magnificent, and cares for the gods and those human beings he wants to care for far better than the just man (362c). Each definition of justice from Book I can be fulfilled by the unjust man, if only he appear to be just. Whether or not he truly helps friends, gets the better of anything, and truly sacrifices, or repays what is owed, is another question, which depends upon the nature of advantage (Strauss, The City and Man, p. 67-68 on Socratic restoration).
[Adiemantus adds that all who praise justice do so as a drudgery good for its consequences. What Socrates and Socratic philosophy is about to do is of the greatest significance, and is unprecedented, or has never been done before- to show that justice either is or is necessary to the health of the soul. Adeimantus concludes:
…of all who claim to be praisers of justice,…there is not one who has ever blamed injustice or praised justice other than for the reputation, honors and gifts that come from them. But as to what each itself does with its own power when it is in the soul of a man who posses it and is not noticed by gods and men, no one has ever, in poetry and prose adequately developed the argument that the one is the greatest of evils that a soul can have in it, and justice the greatest good.”
(366 e)
Since all the goods attainable by justice seem also attainable by the one who only appears just- assuming that such sacrifices satisfy the divine- Adiemantus draws the Machiavellian conclusion that one must draw a shadow painting of virtue all around himself, while himself trailing behind as a wily fox.
At the founding of the city in speech, Socrates states: “A city, I believe, comes into being because each of us isn’t sufficient, but is in need of much” (364b1). This refers first to bodily necessities. But the founding of the city in speech is also the founding of a group of men who are together seeking to know the nature of man. Socrates says, “Let us make a city in speech from the beginning. Our need, it seems, will make it” (369 c9). If this need is natural to man, then it will be in this city- the community of the dialogue- that the good of the individuals will be identical or nearly identical with the common good.
End
Note 1 [2022 The question may be enlivened for us by a story. After reading The Republic, I met a preacher at the Diag of the University of Michigan, whose mission it was to preach there to the intellectuals. I asked, if men choose to follow Jesus or the Lord only for the sake of their eternal reward and to avoid eternal punishment, for their own sake rather than for others, is this salvation? Will we be saved as such, acting from fear for pleasure and to avoid pains? His answer is that the Promise and the fear of Hell is how men first think to turn toward the Lord, But the question remains.]
In stating the question of justice, Plato’s Socrates addresses the principles of modern political theory with remarkable thoroughness, making clear how in political philosophy as well, all is footnotes to Plato. Contract theory and the return to the original, pre-political condition both appear, if the viciousness of the animal apparent in Hobbes, and the cruelty, in Machiavelli, is veiled, leaving an original condition more akin to Eden and Rousseau. But it is governments, not our political nature or justice itself, that is a contract.
Note 2: Strauss addresses the question of the origins of civil society in relation to the question of justice in Natural Right and History. pp. 89-97, and in The City and Man, pp. 91-96. On page 96 of Natural Right and History Strauss states: “One inquires into the origins of civil society, or right and wrong, in order to find out whether or not these are based on nature or merely on convention.” But it seems rather, from Strauss’ account here, that all one can discover by examining the origins is that of right which is based upon convention, and if one wants to know about what is right by nature, one examines the end and not the origin (or perhaps the end as cause, the end as origin). It looks as if the examination of the origin is entirely to clear away the convention which hides nature. Strauss presents natural right as based upon a hierarchy of desires, i.e., on a hierarchic nature of man. The highest, philosophy, was not there in the beginning, but presupposes the arts (p. 97); hence, if philosophy is the best life, the origin is imperfect. This seems to be some time after the beginning. The distinction between the good and the ancestral is made by seeing that the origin of man is low but this does not help to distinguish between the conventionalism of natural philosophy and the natural right of philosophy which considers the nature of man and the health of the soul.
It may be that the distinction between perfect and imperfect origins ought be added to the question of the harmonious or disharmonious origins. Eden and Atlantis are both harmonious but low origins, low by comparison with philosophy and the Kingdom or city of God, beyond or at the end of time. It was said that if the origins were harmonious, justice is available in the cosmos. Both convention and natural philosophy look to the origins, from which we have fallen or risen up, while Socratic philosophy and the New Testament look to the end.
Coming soon: On Republic Book I: The class notes from Irving Wasserman, 1981; 1983
* Thrasymachus argument is the principle of the three bad forms of regime in Aristotle, seeking the advantage of the ruling body.
*All the things sought by those who seek justice- the three definitions of Book I , are fulfilled by the unjust man who only seems to be just.
These notes will be collected for Chapter IX of …”Toward a Philosophic psychology
That dreams are normally pleasant to have and recall indicates that they have a natural function. The pleasure is akin to self knowing and the highest liberal arts and studies. Though we never understand the dream, its apprehension and experience both serve some function, such as developing new regards for spiritual problems, reminding us of particulars neglected in the day, seeing doubts and hypotheses we have repressed, and the like.
“Dream memory” is different than waking memory. It sometimes arises as we return to sleep, like the stars at twilight.
Dreams do not usually draw on any scenes or even items directly from waking memory, as though it had no access.
Dreams are involuntary products of our own souls which are entirely invented from out of the dream memory rather than the waking memory.
Sometimes we remember snapshots on waking, sometimes the whole context, but dreams are almost always of the dreamer himself in some quasi real circumstance while he believes himself to be waking. The question then is why should the soul produce this experience- as each particular must have some cause.
That dreams are normally pleasant to have and recall indicates that they have a natural function. The pleasure is akin to self knowing and the highest liberal arts and studies. Though wee never understand the dream, its apprehension and experience both serve some function, such as developing new regards for spiritual problems, reminding us of particulars neglected in the day, seeing doubts and hypotheses we have repressed, and the like.
Freud began the modern study of the unconscious with his theory that the meaniong of a dream could be unraveled by looking for the sublimation of a wish by what he came to call the superego, an ethical faculty similar to conscience. Hence, the old Pauline understanding of the division in the soul between law and sin explains the wish and motive, appealing to the animal principle in man as natural while the human is thought entirely conventional. Jung accepts the understanding of these workings as a personal unconscious, going on to discuss what he calls the “collective ” unconscious,” pertaining to matters of love and knowledge. The link between these two levels of the soul is the anima and animus function active in matters of love. Symbols of collective as distinct from personal significance arise from the knowledge or archetypes” that is apparently in the soul of each, accounting for the universal similarities of symbols such as rebirth in the imaginative products of every “culture.” For example, to dream of a woman one knows is a personal content. To dream of a woman one does not know is anima.
The thought of Jung does not appeal to the animal as the only natural principle in the soul, but there is also the archetype of the “wise old man, for this the pursuit of wisdom and self-knowledge may be most natural. Hence we say that the better thinkers appeal to two natural principles of body and soul.
The dreams of Socrates are: Crito. Xenophon.
Apology on Dreams
Republic Book IX and the “Oedipus Complex.”
Republic VI-VII on imagination: the pool.
Dreams in scripture are:
Daniel 2 Nebuchadnezzar has a dream which his magicians fail to interpret. Daniel tells him both the dream and the interpretation.
Excerpt adapted from “Family History.”
The prophecy of Ezekiel refers to the nations of Genesis 10. After describing the restoration of Israel, Ezekiel is told to set his face “toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him.” The identification of Magog with Russia is not obvious, and needs to be demonstrated, because it is not the nation most obvious to the prophets themselves, to whom the utter parts of the north might mean the Assyrian, and the kings of the East, the Persian or even Babylonian. The Oxford note to Ezekiel 38 and 39 states: Since the foe from the north in Jeremiah (25.9) and Ezekiel (26.7) was Babylon, it is probable that the foe here described is a grandiose surrogate for Babylon…” The identification suggested (p. 1049):
…Gog, king of Magog, both unidentified, though the general location is to the north. Meshech, Assyrian “Mushku,” south of Gomer…Tubal, Assyrian “Tabal,” south of Beth-togarmah…Cush, Ethiopia, Put [with Cush, Ethiopia], Gomer, Assyrian, “Gimirrai,” Cimmerians in central Asia Minor (Gen. 10.2-3). Beth-togarmah, Assyrian “Tilgarimmu, east of the southernmost Halys River…
Tubal and Meshek are trading partners with Tyre (Ezekiel 27:13). They are elsewhere mentioned in the table of nations of Genesis 10. Magog, Tubal and Mechek are three of seven sons of Japheth, the son of Noah. The others are Gomer, Madai, Javan and Tiras, north of Israel and Mesopotamia. On the map printed in some Bibles, Javan is Greece; Gomer the area of the Ukraine, Tubal is placed south of the black sea, in Turkey, and, Tiras is the area of Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania. They may easily have spread north from Ararat and around from there, to become the nations at the four corners of the world. The “Caucasian” Europeans are likely to be descendants of Japheth, rather than Shemites or Hammites, who would be the Semetic and African peoples respectively. Asian, Pacific island and American peoples are either unknown to Genesis, or derived from these. Scofield, (1909, p. 833) notes:
… That the “primary reference” in Ezekiel 38:2-3 “is…to the northern (European) powers, headed up by Russia, all agree. The whole passage should be read in connection with Zech. 12.1-4; 14.1-9; Mt. 24.14-30; Rev. 14.14-20; 19. 17-21. “Gog” is the prince of Magog, his land. The reference to Meshech and Tubal (Moscow and Tobolsk) is a clear mark of identification. Russia and the northern powers have been the latest persecutors of dispersed Israel…
Van Impe often states that a longitude line drawn north from Israel goes through the center of Moscow. He, Gog, is told that the Lord will “put hooks into your jaws,” as though he were the sea beast, and “I will bring you forth…Persia, Cush and Put are with them…Gomer (Cimmeria) and all his hordes; Bethtogarmah (Turkey?) from the uttermost parts of the north with all his hordes, many peoples are with you” (38:4-6). “In the latter years, you will go against the land that is restored from war, the land where people were gathered from many nations and now dwell securely” (38:8). Then, as Isaiah wrote: “In that day, the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.”
The destruction of Gog of Magog looks much like a description of the battle that is Armageddon in the nineteenth chapter of the Revelation. This has been done so that He might vindicate his holiness before their eyes, and has been long prophesied (38:16-17). There will indeed be a great earthquake in Israel, and worldwide, and “all the men that are upon the face of the earth shall quake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down…every man’s sword shall be against his brother…torrential rains and hailstones, fire and brimstone…I will give you to the birds of prey of every sort and to the wild beasts to be devoured” (38:20-39:8). For seven years, the people of Israel make fires of the weapons, which we do not believe are literally shields and bucklers and such. For seven years they will be burying the corpses in a cemetery of Gog. Ezekiel is told to summon the birds for a sacrificial feast (39:17), the same as that in Revelation 19. “You shall eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the princes of the earth.” There follows in Ezekiel the measuring of the temple.
Following Gabelein and Scofield, Van Impe discusses the nations (11: 59 And Counting, pp. 119-127). Following Josephus History, I. vi, he identifies Magog as Scythian, Meshek with Moscow, Tubal with Tubalsk, Rosh with Russia. There is no ancient memory of the Scythians remaining, prior to the Christian era, beyond Herodotus, writing of the early 5th century B.C. Bethtogarma is identified with Turkey, and Tarshish with Britain, which is neither certain nor impossible. The Oxford edition suggests Southern Spain, Ez. 10:9, “Uphaz,” a place unknown.
Van Impe explains that Gogh is the word those north of the Caucasus might use for the fort of Gogh. “Meshech and his tribe left Asia Minor and went to the western part of of the land we now call Russia, settling in what is presently called Moscow (Mesech, then Mosach, then Moscovi, and now Moscow…Tubal, with his tribe left Asia Minor and settled in the eastern part of the ;land we now call Russia. On Ezekiel 38:2-3, Van Impe notes:
If we had a Jewish version of the Bible, written in Hebrew- we would find the name “Rosh” instead of “chief prince of….” The English translators translated the meaning of the name rather than the name itself. The sentence then would read Gog of Magog and Rosh of Meshech and Tubal.” Van Impe writes, “Rosh was the name of the tribe dwelling in the area of the Volga. Citing Wilbur Smith,
…He obtained from the Soviets themselves information about the derivation of their modern name Russia.” The story goes back to the eleventh century when the barbarian hordes were attacking Constantinople, the emperor said, Who are these northerners, They seem to have no name.” As he searched, he came to Ezekiel 38:2 and the name “Rosh.” (p. 11:59 and Counting, p. 122). Checking out the geography, he concluded that these people from the uttermost parts of the north…had to be the Rosh of this verse. Consequently, for the next 700 years, the nations of the world called these people “Rosh.
The river Ras is just south of Kyiv, and likely gave its name to the Vorangian Ras, or was named for them, so that the word Ras could easily be as old as Ezekiel.. Heading North up the Dneiper from Byzantium, the river would be more prominent than the Volga.
The Quran is consistent with the understanding of Van Impe regarding Gog and Magog as peoples just North of the Caucasus. Following the story of Moses and Khadir, Sura 18 tells the story of Zul- Qarnain, thought to be Cyrus. He was taken on a journey to the limits East and Weast, and then North, where he builds a wall for a primitive people to protect them from “Yajuj and Majuj, (Gog and Magog). In a valley between two mountains, he built a wall with blocks of iron covered by molten metal, so that Gog and Magog were unable to climb it or dig through it. This wall will be brought to dust when the promise of the Lord comes to pass:
And on that day, we shall leave them (Yajuj and Majuj) to climb like waves upon one another; and the trumpet will be blown, and we shall bring them (all creatures ) together. And on that day, we shall give hell for disbelievers to see, all spread out (for them)…
Sura 18.99-100
If the story were of Cyrus, it would be a second reference not to Ras, but Gog and Magog from about 570 B.C. that has worked its way into the teachings written from Mohammed.
If Gog is the word for the Causasus, it would be interesting that these may be the peoples involved in “White” or Caucasoid race based fascism, which has German Norwegian and now Russian branches. “four corners of the world” though, in the Revelation, may indicate that the Caucasians of North America are not exempt.
Chuck Missler adds a reference from Pliny:
We are noting certain reasons to think the present expansion of Russ is not that prophesied- as the result would seem to be a nuclear exchange and earthquake that destroys 1/3rd of the earth. One is where the possible is Antichrist is attacked from the North, which would mean that is different from Magog. We said it might arise out of a similar alignment, but in 500 years, for all we know.” It may occur, but from our current failures after a a couple changes of the Russian regime. It is, though, a really bad guy, one of the worst of all time, not like Trump, a gangster wanna-be. Also, if Ras is Ukraine, Meshek having failed to take this, Ras is not in the coalition yet. Persia, Greece, Ethiopia, might be with Meshek though
Attending to Daniel 2, The Roman empire divides into the two legs of the statue, and the ten toes- 5 east and 5 west- seem to be the European sovereignties. There is no telling, though, how long such a thing might take. “The end is not at once.” Nor is the use of the word “coastlands” by A. Dugin encouraging.
mmcdonald77 