Looking at things that are far away

I wrote a foreword for the 2012 reprinting of Guthrie's The Greek Philosophers.  I've just seen the cover that Routledge have chosen.  I like it.  It's also quite long way back to 1950, of course, when Guthrie wrote the book.

Look through here to see things from a long time ago.

It's not available until the autumn but if you can't wait to spend £9.99 click here:

Subject taster day for prospective undergraduate applicants

Subject Taster Events for students in Year 12

20th March 2012

Politics, Psychology and Sociology

Philosophy

These events will involve lectures and sessions by academics, including the subject Director of Studies, and are designed to:

• stimulate interest and thought
• give a sense of university-level study
• highlight the particular nature of the Cambridge course
• enrich students’ academic studies

The first session starts at 10.30 and the event ends at 15.15. Lunch and refreshments are included. The closing date for applications is 5th March 2012. Early booking is advised.

Applications must be made via your school.  Please use the nomination form (link below) and return the completed form to the address shown.  Schools can nominate a maximum of 2 students per taster event.

Closing date for Nominations 5th March 2012
Nomination Form

For more information on studying as an undergraduate at Corpus click here.

More middle fingers

Now it's Adele continuing a fine tradition of Cynic digital dismissal.

Adele, being a bit like Diogenes the Cynic: 'You want to listen some more to Blur?  Well, that's Britpop for you!'

In other news, now That's a good idea:

Philebus 42b: a helpful suggestion

My worry about Philebus 42b got this helpful answer from Mehmet Erginel.  He writes:

It would indeed be hard to make sense of it if Socrates were claiming that pains seem lesser and less intense when compared with pleasures, when he is claiming that pleasures seem greater and more intense when compared with pain. It would also be inconsistent with what Plato says about the mutual intensification of juxtaposed pleasures and pains in Republic IX (at least as I understand it): 586c1-2, for instance, suggests that both pleasure and pain appear more intense when juxtaposed with one another. Moreover, 584a7-10 and 584e8-585a5 suggest that the effect of juxtaposition with a contrasting experience is symmetrical in the case of pleasure and pain. 

My suggestion is to understand 'the opposite' differently: we are to understand that the intensity of pleasure and pain can be placed on a continuum, such that maximally intense pleasure and maximally intense pain are at the opposite ends of this continuum, with the neutral state in the middle. On this understanding, pain appearing more painful and intense could be understood as the opposite of pleasure appearing more pleasant and intense. This use of 'the opposite' would be like its use in saying that on certain economic policies, the rich get richer and the opposite happens to the poor, meaning that the poor get poorer - each becoming more of its kind.

This would get Socrates to say something sensible, I suppose.  Nearer pains might appear more intense and nearer pains might do the opposite, by appearing more intense too.

Philebus 42b2-6

Socrates is trying to convince Protarchus of a second way in which a pleasure can be false.  This kind of false pleasure somehow arises out of a mistaken comparison with a pain in a way similar to that in which things that are closer or further away sometimes appear larger or smaller in comparison with one another than they really are.  At 42b2-6 he says:

Νῦν δέ γε αὐταὶ διὰ τὸ πόρρωθέν τε καὶ ἐγγύθεν ἑκάστοτε μεταβαλλόμεναι θεωρεῖσθαι, καὶ ἅμα τιθέμεναι παρ' ἀλλήλας, αἱ μὲν ἡδοναὶ παρὰ τὸ λυπηρὸν μείζους φαίνονται καὶ σφοδρότεραι, λῦπαι δ' αὖ διὰ τὸ παρ' ἡδονὰς τοὐναντίον ἐκείναις.

 Which I think means something like:

But now, because of the fact of being seen from nearby and then far away in turn and, at that same time, being set against one another, the pleasures appear greater and more intense when compared with pain, while the pains seem the opposite when compared with pleasures. 

I'm a bit confused by this.  On the face of it, Socrates seems to say that pleasures seem greater and more intense when compared with pain and that pains seem lesser and less intense when compared with pleasures.  But why should that be so?  I might think that what he ought to say is something about us being biased to the near, whether what is nearer is a pleasure or a pain: the nearer pleasure seems greater and more intense than it ought in comparison with a further pain and a nearer pain seems greater and more intense than it ought in comparison with a further pleasure.  But he doesn't, or at least I don't think he does.  (Damascius thinks he does: In Phileb. §187.)[1]  Socrates does not say that nearer pains appear greater and more intense than they ought in comparison with later pleasures.  But such a claim about nearer pains seems at least as plausible as the claim he certainly does make about nearer pleasures. 

Is it because Socrates thinks we are biased not to the near but to the pleasant?  This might be what be he is interested in rather than a bias to the near; the analogy with nearer and further objects of sight would on this account be rather misleading.  Or could it be that he somehow combines the two thoughts?  He thinks we are biased so as to tend to overvalue mistakenly only the nearer pleasure (but that we do not equally tend mistakenly to overvalue the nearer pain).  Or is Socrates simply not at all interested about mistakes concerning pains, only those that concern pleasures and therefore is not very careful to spell out the possibility of doloric mistakes?

[1] : Ὅτι ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν αἰσθητῶν τὰ μὲν ἐγγύθεν ὁρᾶται μείζω, τὰ δὲ πόρρωθεν ἐλάττω, τὰ αὐτὰ ὄντα, οὕτω καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἡδέων καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν λυπηρῶν· τὸ γὰρ παρὸν ἀεὶ μεῖζον εἶναι δοκεῖ τοῦ ἀπόντος, καὶ <λυπηρὸν> λυπηροῦ καὶ ἡδὺ ἡδέος καὶ ἡδὺ λυπηροῦ καὶ λυπηρὸν ἡδέος.

"My band is...

...spinach, I guess."

One-fingered salute

So, it turns out that M.I.A. made a particular unidigital gesture during a Super Bowl performance.  Cue apologies similar to those that followed a wardrobe malfunction on a previous show.  The BBC report wonders how old the gesture might be and points to Diogenes the Cynic.  Diogenes Laertius (6.34) reports:

ξένων δέ ποτε θεάσασθαι θελόντων Δημοσθένην, τὸν μέσον δάκτυλον ἐκτείνας, “οὗτος ὑμῖν,” ἔφη,“ἐστὶν ὁ Ἀθηναίων δημαγωγός. 

When some friends from out of town wanted to do and see Demosthenes, he stretched out his middle finger and said, "This is the Athenians' demagogue".

It seems that there was little love lost between Diogenes and Demosthenes.  And Diogenes is not averse to a bit of shocking behaviour so perhaps it is a gesture of contempt.  But I wasn't not sure whether what he have here is an insulting gesture of contempt aimed at his guest-friends for wanting to go and see Demosthenes in action.

A similar story appears in Epictetus 3.2.11:

οὐκ οἶδας, ὅτι Διογένης τῶν σοφιστῶν τινα οὕτως ἔδειξεν ἐκτείνας τὸν μέσον δάκτυλον, εἶτα ἐκμανέντος αὐτοῦ ‘Οὗτός ἐστιν’, ἔφη, ‘ὁ δεῖνα· ἔδειξα ὑμῖν αὐτόν’;

Anyway, a quick TLG search seems to confirm that it is more or less the gesture we know now.  Scholiasts on Aristophanes Clouds (ad 653 and 549) suggest as much.  And here is the Suda:

The verb is σκιμᾱλίζω,'to hold up the middle finger': 

Ἐσκιμάλισεν
τῷ μέσῳ δακτύλῳ συναρμόσας τὸν μέγαν καὶ πλήξας ἐφυβρίζει. ἢ ἀντὶ τοῦ  κατεδακτύλισε· σκιμαλίσαι γάρ ἐστι κυρίως τὸ μέσον τὸν δάκτυλον εἰς τὸν πρωκτὸν τοῦ ὀρνέου ἐμβαλεῖν. οὐ μόνον δὲ τοῦτο, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅταν βουλόμενοι ἐνυβρίσαι τινά, τὸν μέσον δάκτυλον ἐντείνοντες καὶ τοὺς λοιποὺς συνάγοντες δείξωσιν αὐτῷ. Ἀριστοφάνης· καὶ τὸν δορυξὸν οἷον ἐσκιμάλισεν.

So, it is principally to do with shoving a middle finger up a bird's anus and also can be used to insult someone.

Vacancy

 University Lectureship in Classics (Ancient Philosophy) at the University of Cambridge.  Details of the post and information about the application process are available here.  Further particulars [pdf].  More details about ancient philosophy at the University of Cambridge can be found here.

Profundity

Have you been watching Jonathan Meades on France?  I hope so.  I think it has now finished but the iplayer might let you catch up.  Last night was typical: odd, off-putting, unashamedly indulgent and clever-clever (How many programmes, even on BBC4, use the word 'oinological'?) but sensible or at least provocatively interesting (On not blaming architecture for social problems; put the same design of tower block in a chic bourgeois neighbourhood and it becomes 'as they say, "sought-after"') and funny.  ROFL funny.  Last night he came out (en passant and in a deadpan delivery) with the phrase: 'This is a France so profonde it is almost gnomic'.  The Guardian review collects some more.

On what matters on what matters

Someone pointed this bit of the interweb out to me.  There are pictures of On what matters on what matters.  Haha.

Start your engines...

Good news.  The Faculty of Classics here in Cambridge will very soon be advertising a vacancy for a University Lectureship in Ancient Philosophy.  Details of the timetable for the appointment process and the Further Particulars for the position will be posted soon on the Faculty website.  But the deadline for application will be relatively tight.  So, this is an early warning: if you might be interested, please keep a look out for the advertisement and prime your referees.

Fellowship

At the beginning of term, there are all sorts of annoying things to do.  In Cambridge, often we have to do similar things twice because each thing has to be done for the Faculty and also for the College.  So the beginning of term is also a time when you begin to get grumpy with each other because if you look across at the person down the table from you at lunch, it often seems as if they are doing less than you.  Grrr.  Add in the fact that some colleagues have acquired the talent for playing off the college against the university and vice versa ('Dear college person, I'm sorry I cannot do the small job you've asked me to do because of me heavy commitments to research projects in the Faculty/Departmnent.  See you for dinner on Wednesday, love,...'; 'Dear Faculty person, I'm sorry I cannot do this small thing in the Faculty because I have lots of things to do in college at the moment.  blah blah blah'.) and things can get very annoying.

But I think I have discovered the problem.  It's wikipedia.  The relevant bit of the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow reads as follows:

Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin

...

• At Cambridge, teaching officers (lecturers, readers, and professors) are entitled to a college fellowship. For lecturers and readers, the process is competitive – generally the most able academics get fellowships at the richest and most prestigious colleges^{[citation needed]}. Professors are allocated to colleges by a centralised process to ensure fairness. These fellows may or may not provide small-group teaching to undergraduates in the college, for which they would be paid by the hour. College fellows at Cambridge (except for research fellows) have no duties as such and are not paid. They will typically have a salaried post either with their college or the university.

'Citation needed' indeed.  Hear that, fellows of poorer colleges?  It's because you lost.  But the bit the bothers me is the '...have no duties as such...'  Nonsense.  But worse: dangerous nonsense.  People might believe it.  Worse: some Fellows might believe it.

Stoics, indifferents, etc.

I've been joining in a discussion here on Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy with No Gaps blog inspired by a paper by George Karamanolis.  I wasn't at the talk but, according to Peter's report, George was interested in the Stoic notion of indifferents and how it might be that some are preferred and others dispreferred while none is either good or bad.  Good question.  And it's also part of what lies behind the Stoics' odd claims about how a person might become virtuous (and might make progress towards virtue) which is behind some of Plutarch's discussion in the text being blogged here.

Teubners online

A useful link for people on the Cambridge network (and any other subscribing institution): the De Gruyter online ebooks includes lots of Teubner editions, available to be downloaded in pdf format from this link here.  (Click the 'Series overview' tab and then the links to the various texts.  If you see a 'Read content' box like for the Sextus Empiricus volume here, then you can download away.)  They have lots of other books here too.  Search for what you want and then you will be able to access the pdfs by clicking when you see a 'Read content' button (e.g. for the recent Anaximander und Anaximenes here).

The miners' hymns

I might have gushed about Jóhann Jóhannsson here before (in particular, his wonderful IBM 1401, A user's manual: look here for 'Part I, IBM 1401: Processing Unit' (annoying ad beforehand, I'm afraid), but I've just been listening to his most recent work, the 2011 The Miners' Hymns.  You can read more about the background of the pieces here and the roots of their inspiration in trade unionism and brass bands.

Here is the final piece from the album, 'The cause of labour is the hope of the world', with accompanying film put together by Bill Morrison.  Stay with it as it builds.

 

New blog

I've been a bit slow here, but there is a blog written by the Cambridge Classics graduates.  It's over here.

Being a better person

Over at Blogistikon they are beginning a virtual reading group on Plutarch's On progress in virtue.  I'm told that they are keen to have as many interested participants as possible, so please go and join in.

Thankless futility

This link is doing the rounds on the interwebs, but it has a tangential link to things ancient philosophical, so here goes (and, anyway, my head is hurting too much from a first day back at my desk to think of anything more creative to say just now).  Click here to 'enjoy' some retro-gaming-style recreation of mythological Greek punishments and also to see whether you can complete Zeno's dichotomy paradox...

Media stuff

Here's are the two first salvos in my vain attempt to become the Professor Brian Cox of ancient philosophy:

An In Our Time episode on Heraclitus here.

And an interview for Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy with no Gaps on Epicureanism.

Coming soon: a 12 part TV series in HD on early Milesian cosmology...

Christmas music

There are some good Christmassy songs. I like the sad ones. Some of them are good bad songs. Like this one (it's a bit quiet, but it's important that you watch the excellent video):

And then there are some good good songs. Here is Galaxie 500 singing about snow.