LET US DISCUSS PLATO

Well, this is new!

Until now, as far as I can tell, my ‘friends’, and ‘protectors’ - presumably the same that punished me, because of my successful protest LET US DISCUSS PLATO, by blocking my toilet - did not interfere with what I was putting on my blog. But this time, several times they doubled long passages, like the one quoted bellow, distorting them at the same time. When it occurred to me to devote to this new unwanted development an article on my blog, I had corrected the distortions; I do not want to reproduce the distortions out of memory.

‘Socrates: Then will you be surprised (Qauma/sei ou]n), since you say this (tau=ta le/gwn), if Well, this is newyour words do not remain fixed (e0a/n soi oi9 lo/goi fai/nwntai mh\ me/nontej) but walk about (a0lla\ badi/zontej), and will you accuse me of being the Daedalus (kai\ e0me\ ai0tia/sei to\n Dai/dalon) who makes them walk (badi/zontaj au0tou\j poiei=n), when you are yourself much more skilful than Daedalus (au0to\j de\ w@n polu\ texnikw&teroj tou= Daida/lou) and make them go around in a circle (kai\ ku/klw| periio/nta poiw~n;)? Or do you not see (h2 ou0k ai0sqa/nei) that our definition has come round to the point from which it started (o3ti o9 lo/goj perielqw_n pa/lin ei0j tau0to\n h3kei;)? For you remember, I suppose (me/mnhsai ga/r pou), that a while ago we found that holiness and what is dear to the gods are not the same (o3ti e0n tw~| e1mprosqen to/ te o3sion kai\ to\ qeofile\j ou0 tau=to\n h9mi=n e0fa/nh), but different from each other (a0ll’ e3tera a0llh/lwn); or do you not remember (h2 ou0 me/mnhsai;)?

Euthyphro: Yes, I remember (E!gwge).

Socrates: Then either our argument a while ago was wrong (Ou0kou=n h2 a1rti ou0 kalw~j w(mologou=men), or if that was right (h2 ei0 to/te kalw~j), we are wrong now (nu=n ou0k o0rqw~j tiqe/meqa).

Euthyphro: So it seems (E!oiken).’

My toilet has been unblocked. How did it happen? I wrote about it in my ‘Olive Branch’, the email in which I informed professor Allan about LET US DISCUSS PLATO, which I did at Balliol yesterday:

‘Dear Professor Allan;

On Tuesday April 2^nd I intend to protest at Balliol: LET US DISCUSS PLATO.

It would be much nicer to discuss Plato in Balliol, rather than in front of the entrance to Balliol. Would you invite me to Balliol to discuss the Meno? It was two years ago, in the night of March 31, 2022, that I discovered in Diogenes Laertius a passage that indicates that the Meno was written prior to the trial and death of Socrates.

Let me inform you that my toilet is unblocked. How did it happen? On our noticeboard I read a notice inviting the residents to a meeting scheduled for April 5th, in which the residents are invited to voice their views on how the management is doing.

And so, I wrote an e-mail to our lady manager:

“Dear Sharon Carpenter,

If my toilet does not get unblocked, I shall talk about it at ‘Your Opinion Matters’ on 5^th April.

See you there,

Julius Tomin”

I sent the mail late in the evening, on Friday March 29. On Saturday afternoon it occurred to me to look at the toilet: 'What if?'

The toilet was unblocked.

With best wishes,

Julius Tomin’

I sent the mail to the lady manager via: contact@midlandheart.org.uk

***

On Friday April 12 it will be 44 years since Dr Kenny, the Master of Balliol visited my seminar in Prague. I wrote about it in ‘Pursuit of Philosophy’, published in History of Political Thought, Volume V, Issue 3, Winter 1984.

I shall celebrate that visit in front of Balliol with LET US DISCUSS PLATO on Friday, April 12.

With best wishes,

Julius Tomin

PS

After arriving at Oxford in 1980 I asked Dr Kenny to renew our discussion that the Czechoslovak police interrupted in Prague. I asked for discussion open to the public. Kenny did not respond to my request; instead, he invited me to Balliol, to read the Eudemian Ethics, just the two of us. The Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachean Ethics share three books, which are normally published in the Nicomachean Ethics, viewed by Aristotelian scholars as Aristotle’s mature work. By stylometric investigations, using computer techniques, Kenny proved in The Aristotelian Ethics that the three books belonged originally to the Eudemian Ethics. In ‘Pursuit of Philosophy' I wrote:

If I remember it well, Kenny began with the Nicomachean passage, in which ‘happiness consists in the contemplative activity and philosophy thus becomes the primary source of happiness.' For the Eudemian Ethics, to which he came afterwards, happiness consisted in an ideal functioning of every part of the soul. Kenny argued that the Eudemian conception was critical of the Nicomachean conception: ‘A person who organized his life entirely with a view to the promotion of philosophical speculation was not wise but cunning, not phronimos but panourgos. The type of person whom many regard as the hero of the Nicomachean Ethics turns out, by the standards of the Eudemian Ethics, to be vicious and ignoble character (The Aristotelian Ethics, Oxford, 1978, p. 214).

With Dr Kenny we spent a whole Term reading the Eudemian Ethics. I enjoyed every minute of it, and in the 2^nd book I came across a passage that indicates that the Eudemian Ethics was an early work. Aristotle is defining the term ‘bouleuesthai’ (‘to deliberate’). He argues that we use this term only if ‘to do or not to do’ a thing is in our pour (ef’ hemin). As an example of things we do not deliberate about, he gives ‘a situation in India’ (dio ou bouleuometha peri ton en Indois ‘this is why we do not deliberate about things in India’). When Aristotle wrote the Nicomachean Ethics, India became part of the empire of Alexander the Great; there was no place in it for such a remark on ‘deliberating’. Aristotle wrote the Nicomachean Ethics for the mature Alexander; to make it quicker and easier for himself, he took three middle books from the Eudemian and inserted them in the Nicomachean Ethics.

Let me end with Plato. In the Meno, which I would love to discuss with Oxford classicists, are references to Plato’s Phaedran Palinode, which corroborates the ancient story that the Phaedrus was Plato’s first dialogue.