Anaxagoras' Apophthegmatik?

This morning in the PhD seminar we were thinking about the presentation of Democritus in Aristotle Met. Γ 5. But this was one of the little passages which struck me as requiring a bit more thought. It’s not about Democritus at all but Anaxagoras:

Ἀναξαγόρου δὲ καὶ ἀπόφθεγμα μνημονεύεται πρὸς τῶν ἑταίρων τινάς, ὅτι τοιαῦτ’ αὐτοῖς ἔσται τὰ ὄντα οἷα ἂν ὑπολάβωσιν.

Arist. Met. 1009b25–8

There is also related a saying of Anaxagoras to his friends that things will be for them just as they conceive.

For Aristotle this is further evidence of a general trend in early philosophy for mistakenly believing that all appearances or opinions are equally true, a trend which he sees as eventually resulting in the unfortunate consequence that these otherwise serious thinkers turn out to say that one and the same thing can simultaneously be F and not-F or that two contradictory opinions or perceptions can be simultaneously true.

My question is: Why think this bit of Anaxagoras has anything to do with that set of epistemological and metaphysical questions? What puzzled me initially was the future tense: ἔσται. If the sense is broadly epistemological then this would have to be generalising: ‘things will (sc. always) be as you take them to be’. But the sense would surely just as well be satisfied with a plain present. On the other hand, Diels–Kranz include it as DK 59 A 28, the first of the section: ‘Apophthegmatik’, and that seems to me to be also quite possible; perhaps it even makes better sense of the future tense. Encountered outside of the Aristotelian frame, this little saying might easily be taken to be an exhortation to the power of positive or optimistic thinking: ‘Things will turn out as you think...’ Of course, if that’s right, then Aristotle has either misunderstood or else has wilfully included here in his catalogue of early assertions of this general view something he knows well is not absolutely apposite. Lanza’s note in his 1966 edition of Anaxagoras thinks this is intolerable (ad A 28, p. 37–8) on the grounds that (i) this would imply there was some kind of Anaxagorean ethical view, which is otherwise unattested and (ii) Aristotle would not be guilty of such ‘una voluntaria grave improprietà’. I’m not sure about either reason. Cherniss, who is cited with disapproval by Lanza, is predictably quite happy with finding Aristotle so guilty and can comfortably say that A 28 is a bit of Anaxagorean moralising. I don’t think there are easy answers to Aristotle’s propriety or otherwise, but it is certainly clear that in this passage he is on the look out for any sign in his predecessors of passages that point in the general direction of the thesis he’s proposing. And I am also not so sure of Lanza’s (i). First, a good case could be made for there being a moral or teleological aspect to Anaxagoras’ cosmology. I don't think I've made up my mind about that yet. But certainly, there are other snippets of moralising here and there ascribed to Anaxagoras, and some are found even in Aristotle himself (see DK 59 A 30 = EN 1141b3ff. and 1179a13, EE 1215b6ff, 1216a11, indeed all of the ‘Apophthegmatik’). Now, these may be meagre pickings, but I’ve no reason to doubt that Anaxagoras was also interested in matters ethical, broadly conceived.

Reading Sextus Empiricus

Apologies for not saying very much recently about ancient philosophy. This is mostly because I have been stuck doing various sorts of administrative nonsense over the first few days of term or have been tidying up things for publication so they're not the right sort of stuff to be thrown into the ether. But something I've gone back to in the last couple of days has got me wondering, and it's just possible somebody reading this might be able to help.

I am trying to think about Sextus Empiricus and about various ways of reading his work. People are interested in and have written a lot about his sources and also about the structure of PH and M. People have also sometimes been interested in the strength of the various arguments he offers and about how to account for the fact that some of them are pretty crummy, indeed so evidently crummy it's worth thinking about why they are there at all. (Sometimes, people point to the last chapters of PH (PH 3.280-81) and the idea that sometimes only a weak dose is needed to cure someone of a dogmatic ill. I think this is a bit odd, by the way: a weak dose is still an effective dose, even if its effectiveness is limited; it can tackle only mild (e.g.) fevers. I don't really see how someone with a weak commitment to a dogmatic position would be served by a bad argument while someone heavily committed to a view will need a better argument... It's rather good to think that the level of commitment to some dogmatic view or other does not vary in direct relation to one's ability to spot a decent argument.)

Anyway, what I can't find much discussion of is how we are supposed to read the text. I mean: Is it supposed that we just start at the beginning and move through to the end? Is it the sort of thing you go to to 'look up' a particular counter-argument? Are you supposed to flick backwards and forwards, adding to and supplementing the gappy arguments? (How possible was it to find particular bits of text, in any case?) Indeed, I am beginning to lament the lack in Sextan studies of the (perhaps sometimes excessive) sort of discussion you find of Platonic works. Find what looks for all the world like a crap argument in Plato and people get terrible exercised over how it is in fact pedagogical, or proleptic, or an invitation to further reflection, or some such. It's all to be made right by thinking about the interaction between the text and an active, thinking, reader. Why not try some of that with Sextus? A Pyrrhonist, after all, is supposed to be in some sense an active thinker, open to new arguments and only ever provisionally suspending judgement. In that case, I wonder if we should grant the reader a more active role in engaging with Sextus and, in turn, grant Sextus a more sophisticated notion of how his text might be read and used. I can't see much of this sort of thing in the literature on Sextus, but if there is some out there I'd be very glad to hear of it.

Now, this is all a bit up in the air at the moment and Sextus himself is not overly forthcoming with handy pointers about what we should do with him. But I'm going to see how far these thoughts take me.

Methadone

It's not easy finishing something you've enjoyed enormously. So when S and I got through season 5 of The Wire I was left with an odd combination of feelings. I have never watched anything on TV so engrossing and I suppose in a way I was sad that I had to leave that world behind. I'll watch it again, of course, but that will be a different experience.

Anyway, to help the come-down we've gone back to Homicide: Life on the street which is, as STC said yesterday, obviously a bit of a dry-run for The Wire. (In fact, I think she said it was to The Wire what Titus Andronicus is to King Lear...) It's a bit odd watching things backwards, as it were, like this and I suppose that you inevitably start viewing the earlier series is a teleological way. Still, we watched the first episode last night and beyond the shaky camera work the dialogue is recognisably sharp and witty mixed with the equally familiar grim realities of the job. And Gus from the Baltimore Sun is a cop! With a terrible haircut.

Just one another thing I noticed from the first episode. This is 1993, right? So why are they all still using manual typewriters?

So it begins...

Easter term, that is. The exam term. A term of stress and anxiety followed by a couple of weeks of equally serious parties and ceremonies. And today is one of the most frantic days as we try to see as many students and tutees as we can before the teaching begins on Thursday. (It also so happened that today was one of the rare occasions when our childcare arrangements failed, so things are even more frantic than expected. Ho hum.)

Still, the sun is shining and college only really feels right when it is full of students doing whatever it is they do. Anyway, the place feels properly alive.

Jaffa cakes

Giles Coren makes an enormous one here, inspired by www.pimpthatsnack.com (their recipe is here):

When taxonomy matters

Reading a recent post on Fairing's Parish about taxonomy I was reminded of a recent momentous legal judgement about the correct classification of the M&S chocolate teacake, which has for twenty years been classified by the tax office as a biscuit and therefore subject to VAT. That means we the cake eaters have been overcharged by 17.5% per teacake. (It was not clear whether this has also affected what I take to be the paradigm example of this species, namely the Tunnocks tea cake, but never mind.)

In fact there are two issues here. First there is the question of how to distinguish between a cake and a biscuit. Of course, some cases are very obvious: a Rich Tea is a biscuit, but a Black Forest gateau is a cake. But there are some other more difficult examples. What, precisely, is a Jaffa Cake? (It seems to be classed for tax purposes as a biscuit, and the authoritative site: A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down agrees.) Incidentally ANCOTAASD has a useful field guide for cake/biscuit identification here.

Second even once the specimen has been classified, there are some further very complicated rules about which biscuits and which cakes are subject to VAT. For example, a biscuit such as a chocolate chip cookie 'where the chips are either included in the dough or pressed into the surface before baking' is not subject to VAT, whereas 'wholly or partly coated biscuits including biscuits decorated in a pattern with chocolate or some similar product' are. The BBC offered the following useful table:

VAT ON CAKES AND BISCUITS

How various products are classified by HM Revenue and Customs

Standard rated [17.5% VAT]

"Biscuits"

All wholly or partly coated biscuits including biscuits decorated in a pattern with chocolate or some similar product

Gingerbread men decorated with chocolate unless this amounts to no more than a couple of dots for eyes

Chocolate shortbread

"Cakes"

"Snowballs" without such a base are classed as confectionary

Shortbread partly or wholly chocolate-covered

Zero rated [no VAT]

"Biscuits"

Chocolate chip biscuits where the chips are either included in the dough or pressed into the surface before baking

Jaffa Cakes

Bourbon and other biscuits where the chocolate or similar product forms a sandwich layer between two biscuit halves and is not continued on to the outer surface

"Cakes"

Marshmallow teacakes (with a crumb, biscuit or cake base topped with a dome of marshmallow coated in either chocolate, sugar strands or coconut)

Caramel or "millionaire's" shortcake consisting of a base of shortbread topped with a layer or caramel and (usually) chocolate or carob

Flapjacks

Surprising conclusions...

An article in this week's THE wonders whether universities ought to vary their methods of assessment and, perhaps, offer students a choice of different assessment methods. Perhaps that's right; I'm not sure. But one of the conclusions reached by the University Mental Health Advisors Network did make me splutter into my coffee...

A policy paper adopted by the network says: "Allowing students to know what questions they are going to be asked in an examination beforehand ... significantly reduces the fear factor associated with the unknown."

Who'd have thought?

Death wishes

I'm very much enjoying Julian Barnes' Nothing to be frightened of, partly because it is an excellently humane discussion of death, thoughts about death, grief and mortality (something of a professional interest of mine) and partly because of the occasional appearances in it of Julian's brother Jonathan. There's a nice list of reviews on the Barnes website here. I haven't been through them all but I did notice John Carey in the Sunday Times manages mistakenly to credit Seneca with the invention of the Symmetry argument: 'the time before your birth was no harm to you, so too will be the time after your death'. (Barnes' self-centred-- and surely jokey -- reply to the argument is worth a second thought, though.)

It has made me think over various things which I might come back to here now and then. First, there is an interesting exchange between the J. Barneses over the sense that can be given to the familiar funeral observation that X is 'what so-and-so would have wanted'... Is such a thought just plain silly?

It depends on what the implied antecedent of this claim is. It is certainly silly, I think, if the thought is something like: 'Had so-and-so been here [sc. at her funeral], this is what she would have wanted'. I suppose there might be some far-out view of post mortem existence which believes that it is possible to witness one's own funeral, perhaps even experience being buried or cremated, but even on this view the wish ought to be expressed not in the remote conditional form but in a plain indicative: 'It is what so-and-so wants', or '... did want', '.. said she wanted' etc. I suppose the fact that it is not in the indicative is meant to convey the idea that in fact no one can be pleased at how one's own funeral is being conducted, but once you have grasped that point then it's probably important to go on to see that given this fact then it becomes non-sensical to worry about whether the funeral would or would not meet the approval of the deceased. There are views which hold that it does indeed matter to the deceased how their interests and wishes are treated after their death but, again, holding one of these would best be served by simply saying: this is what so-and-so did want.

So the only proper sense I think that can be given to the familiar kind of wish is that it conveys the idea that such-and-such is what so-and-so would have wanted had we bothered to ask her what kind of music, say, she wanted at the funeral. That is, while she was alive, this is the sort of thing she would have requested for her funeral. Whether it is rational to have preferences about how one's remains and memory are treated after one's death is another question entirely, of course.

Plutarch in Oxford

The provisional programme and booking details for Eleni Kechagia's conference on Plutarch and philosophy (Oxford, 14-15 July 2008) have now been posted here. I'm going to be saying something about Plutarch's anti-Epicurean polemic in the Non posse.

Nostos

Good news today. For the last two years I've been squatting in what should have been one of the Fellows' guest rooms. Next week I get to return to my own office and I went to have a look around today. The room itself was locked up but the college have decided to do a makeover on the staircase with new carpets and a lick of paint. It all looks very nice; there are even new signs pointing people in the right direction around the maze of corridors. It will be good to get back. I suppose most Cambridge fellows feel very proprietorial about the offices (or 'rooms'; in my case there's only one room, so it's not so appropriate). In fact, it is the issue which generates the most envy between people in college and can generate the strongest feelings if there is ever a proposal to move someone out or rearrange office distribution... In Corpus, it is one of the few things that is at the sole discretion of the Master, and it is not a power which I would want to have.

Other good news. While waiting for the new Portishead album (Third, out April 28) I can listen to the new James album, out on Monday. I might even dig out my old t-shirt to celebrate. There's some info about it (the album, not the t-shirt) here. From a sneaky listen to the preview tracks it's recognisably the sound that takes me straight back to a Sixth Form common room and arguments over the tape player which usually ended with a compilation of 'Come Home', 'How was it for you?' and (though this is a bit hazy) something by The Wonder Stuff (possibly: 'It's yer money I'm after baby'). Heady times. But what has happened to Tim Booth's hair? I thought the silly beard was a prop for his appearance as Judas in the (cringeworthy) Manchester Passion. But apparently not. (Here he is, by the way, if you can bear it, singing 'Heaven knows I'm miserable now' (2 mins into the clip.) I can't count how many ways this is so wrong. To do this to this song... Why? Just because it mentions 'heaven'? The horror. The horror.)

Symmetry arguments for Platonists?

The Epicurean symmetry argument says that death is not to be feared since post mortem time is not relevantly different from pre-natal time. And since no one thinks they were harmed in the time before their birth so no one should think that they will be harmed in the time after their death. The Epicureans team this with the further thought that death is the end of one’s existence just as birth was the beginning to explain why it is that neither of these times can include any harms.

The pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus has an interesting spin on this argument. It is an odd work, to be sure, which seems to lump together Epicurean, Cynic, and Platonist elements into a therapeutic programme. But it seems to me that some elements which might seem incompatible are in fact not necessarily so. One of these is the clear appearance of a version of the symmetry argument at 365d–e which is followed by some grand Platonist rhetoric about the immortality of the soul. Here is Hershbell’s translation of 365d–366a:

“In your distraction, Axiochus, you're confusing sensibility with insensibilty, without realising it. What you say and do involves internal self-contradiction; you don't realise that you're simultaneously upset by your loss of sensations and pained by your decay and the loss of your pleasures—as if by dying you entered into another life, instead of lapsing into the utter insensibility that existed before your birth. Just as during the government of Draco or Cleisthenes there was nothing bad at all that concerned you (because you did not exist then for it to concern you), nor will anything bad happen to you after your death (because you will not exist later for it to concern you).

“Away, then, with all such nonsense! Keep in mind: once the compound is dissolved and the soul has been settled in its proper place, the body which remains, being earthly and irrational, is not the human person. For each of us is a soul, an immortal living being locked up in a mortal prison; and Nature has fashioned this tent for suffering—its pleasures are superficial, fleeting, and mixed with many pains; but its pains are undiluted, long lasting, and without any share of pleasure. And while the soul is forced to share with the sense organs their diseases and inflammations and the other internal ills of the body (since it is disturbed among its pores), it longs for its native heavenly aether, nay, thirsts after it, striving upwards in hopes of feasting and dancing there. Thus being released from upwards in hopes of feasting and dancing there. Thus being released from life is a transition from something bad to something good.”

You might think that here we have an odd combination of Epicurean and Platonist arguments. And in a way that is right. But I suspect that some attempt has been made to render the Epicurean argument consistent with Platonist dualism. First, it is true even on the Platonist view that the person concerned was not ‘around’ in the time of Draco and will not be around after death. This is not, of course, for the reasons the Epicureans think this is true: namely that the soul is mortal and does not pre-exist the living body. Rather, it is because – as Socrates points our here – the soul is only temporarily imprisoned in a body during life and when liberated spends its time not in the world of Draco or Cleisthenes, but in its proper heavenly place.

Second, and similarly, since perception is made the result of this enforced incarnation then a Platonist can equally accept on his own dualist terms the Epicurean notion that before birth and after death there is no perception.

The tricky phrase for this interpretation of course is the supposed explanation for why post mortem time cannot be bad: ‘because you will not exist later for it to concern you’ (366e2; the parallel claim about pre-natal time is at 366d8) since it is claimed only a few lines later that ‘we are each of us a soul’ (366e6) and since the soul is immortal, each of us is immortal.

But perhaps Socrates is deliberately attempting to move the ailing Axiochus from a common-sense notion of his identity (he is Axiochus, born on such and such a date etc.) to a new and surprising sense of his identity (he is an immortal soul…) Certainly 366e6: ‘For we are each of us a soul’ sounds like a grand announcement, which is fleshed out further in what is to come. And it is certainly helpful, in that case, that Axiochus could go back with this new-found identification of his self with an immortal soul and see that the symmetry argument is still just as relevant.

Also, the phrases at 366d8 and e2 which are generally translated using the English ‘exist’ can perhaps be read in a less determinate way so as to lessen any explicit inconsistency. (Forgive the transliteration…I can’t get Greek to work on this machine.)

366d8: archên gar ouk ês, peri hon an ên

366e2: su gar ouk esêi peri hon estai

I wonder whether 366d8, for example, can be read as follows: ‘For in the beginning you were not such as it could concern you’; and e2 could be ‘for you will not be such as it will concern you’. Both these claims could be asserted without qualms by a dualist who accepts an immortal soul.

Sucking up...

We've given in and bought a Dyson. Lovely it is too. Younger daughter decided immediately it looks like a space ship, which I suppose is pretty cool for a hoover. I wondered for a while about the rechargeable, hand-held ones that look like a big gun from the Alien films*, but didn't succumb. Real willpower that.

I had to take old dead hoover to the WEEE recycling centre near Milton (great name; less exciting when you get there). I left it alongside a phalanx of other dead hoovers, including a number of formerly natty Dysons (mostly the older candy-coloured ones...). They looked quite sad, all in a row, but anything of them that can be salvaged and repaired will be.

* That reminds me. I would like to have the Alien films on DVD but they insisted on putting out a set of the four films under the name: The Alien Quadrilogy. Quadrilogy? WTF? There's a perfectly good word for a four-work sequence alreadys without the need to bastardise Latin and Greek like that. (Or perhaps, on second thoughts, the hybridity of the title is a deliberate nod to part of a motif of the films themselves... No, surely not: it was just a cock-up.) Anyway, as a result I can't buy them. Damn.

Springtime...

... in Cambridge.

Some Easter thoughts

Tomorrow will be Easter Sunday and today it is snowing. Aggressively. It's a nice feeling, though, as if this really is the last throes of Winter before we can get on with some warmer and sunnier weather.

Perhaps because it is the Easter weekend, there has been a lot on the news about the Catholic church's displeasure that the PM is reluctant to allow his MPs a 'free vote' on a new embryology bill which would include measures licensing the creation of 'hybrid' embryos. (It looks now as if he might give in.) Anyway, I certainly don't share the Archbishop of Canterbury's certainty that such a bill would be a 'monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life' (extracts from his sermon can be read here). But I did think it worth looking at the HFEA's consultation report, which seems to have been conspicuously absent from much of the discussion in the last couple of days. The full report can be read here, and it's rather interesting. In particular, it gives a clear and detailed account of the current state of scientific research and useful comparisons with similar legislation in other countries.

Also, Appendix D (p. 63ff.) gives data from written responses to the consultation. Now, I don't know who actually responds to these -- I imagine it is not an entirely representative slice of the population since people are more likely to reply if they have strong views one way or another and particularly wish to influence the process, but it's worth a look. Most respondents expressed the view that licensing such research would not be permissible and -- this is the most interesting bit for me -- many of them tried to offer a reason why.

The graph puts them in the following categories:

Life is sacred
'Yuck' responses
Human dignity
Slippery slope
Unconvinced by science
Safety risks
Potentiality of the embryo

Playing God

The first four tend to be the most popular. I'm not quite sure what to make of them, but I'm pretty sure that a 'Yuck' response can't really be a particularly persuasive argument against chaging scientific research (unless, I suppose, the people concerned were all emotivists...).

Philosophers behaving badly

Those classical types could certainly be rude about one another. Here's the latest gem I've discovered, perhaps paying back Epicurus for his cute aphorism about 'spitting on the good'.

The second-century Platonist Calvenus Taurus seems to have been particularly attached to anti-Epicurean anti-hedonist agenda of an extreme kind. Certainly, the terms of his attacks on Epicurus as reported by Aulus Gellius NA 9.5 are uncompromising:

Taurus autem noster, quotiens facta mentio Epicuri erat, in ore atque in lingua habebat verba haec Hieroclis Stoici, viri sancti et gravis: ἡδονὴ τέλος, πόρνης δόγμα· οὐκ ἔστιν πρόνοια, οὐδὲ πόρνης δόγμα.

But our own Taurus, whenever he made mention of Epicurus would have on the tip of his tongue this phrase of the Stoic Hierocles, a pious and serious man: ‘That pleasure is the goal of life is the dogma of a whore; that there is no providence is not even the dogma of a whore’.

Nice.

Saturday science...

Yesterday was fun. Cambridge was full of eager families joining in the excellent Science Week activities. Because of the kids' particular current enthusiasms we concentrated on the stuff in the Sedgwick museum -- real dinosaur bones (an allosaurus foot and arm were the highlights) and lots of fun geology stuff including a model erupting volcano. (Crowd pictured...)

This annual event really is excellent, and the volunteers -- many of them students -- were superb too. It's not east, I imagine, to field questions from toddlers, keen kids and pushy parents, as well as the familiar Cambridge eccentrics. But the ones we met managed still to sound enthusiastic and happy to share their interests. Our kids, anyway, loved it.

And it sets a very high standard for the first 'Festival of Ideas' -- the university's equivalent to the science week festival but concentrating on arts, humanities and social sciences, coming up 22 October - 2 November later this year.

Shurely Shome Mishtake?

Our former Dear Leader, 'Tony' Blair, is to teach a seminar at Yale next year on faith and globalisation. Here's the BBC report. Good grief. And here's the press release from Yale. The best part is here, quoting Yale's President:

"As the world continues to become increasingly inter-dependent, it is essential that we explore how religious values can be channeled toward reconciliation rather than polarization. Mr. Blair has demonstrated outstanding leadership in these areas and is especially qualified to bring his perspective to bear."

I wonder what he is referring to as evidence of TB's outstanding leadership in these areas. I hope he's thinking more of Northern Ireland. Then again, TB strikes me as someone who seems not to be able to distinguish holding a belief sincerely from holding a true belief, so it might be just the seminar to enrol in. Say at the end of your paper that you really felt you were doing the right thing and you're bound to get an A.

RIP Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died this week, which reminded me of what a great hobby those games are. I must have spent a lot of time between the ages of about 8 and 14 playing RPGs: not just D&D, but also RuneQuest, Warhammer FRP, Traveller (that one was really good), one based in the US in the 1920s, Call of Cthulhu etc., and I had a great time. Yes, it was a bit geeky. Yes, perhaps we should have been outside kicking footballs or each other rather than rolling odd dice and pretending to be other people, but it was creative and sociable and it involved all sorts of numerical and linguistic skills. I don't think it can quite be matched by the more recent online variants. There was a brief unfortunate incident when an RE teacher at school tried to claim that it was a form of satanism, but we got over that relatively quickly...

Heracles and the kids from Fame...

Some more thoughts about ponos and pleasure. I've been looking again at Xenophon Mem. 2.1, the bit with Prodicus' story of the choice of Heracles. It seems to me that in his attempt to persuade Aristippus of the importance of virtue and self-control, Socrates is in danger of failing to register clearly a distinction between pleasure taking in hard work or self-denial and pleasure won as a result of hard work and self-denial.

At 2.1.18-20 Socrates appears to be emphasising the latter option: pleasures are like the animals caught after a long day of difficult hunting (18), a reward for a period of hardship and, more importantly, the goal for which that hardship is undertaken. At 2.1.20 Socrates quotes a nice tag from Epicharmus to help make the point:

τῶν πόνων πωλοῦσιν ἡμῖν πάντα τἀγάθ’ οἱ θεοί.

The gods sell us all good things in exchange for our toils.

It's like the line from the beginning of Fame: 'You want the good? Well, the good costs. And right here's where you start paying... in sweat.' And that's the main thrust of the last speech given by personified Virtue at the end of this dialogue: training and exertion, a refusal to gratify desires immediately, is a way to ensure the eventual enjoyment of more pleasure than would be won in a profligate life. Pain and toil itself is not good, but it can be used to get what you really want.

But there is another strand to Socrates' argument even here (2.1.19):

καὶ τὰ μὲν τοιαῦτα ἆθλα τῶν πόνων μικροῦ τινος ἄξιά ἐστι, τοὺς δὲ πονοῦντας ἵνα φίλους ἀγαθοὺς κτήσωνται, ἢ ὅπως ἐχθροὺς χειρώσωνται, ἢ ἵνα δυνατοὶ γενόμενοι καὶ τοῖς σώμασι καὶ ταῖς ψυχαῖς καὶ τὸν ἑαυτῶν οἶκον καλῶς οἰκῶσι καὶ τοὺς φίλους εὖ ποιῶσι καὶ τὴν πατρίδα εὐεργετῶσι, πῶς οὐκ οἴεσθαι χρὴ τούτους καὶ πονεῖν ἡδέως εἰς τὰ τοιαῦτα καὶ ζῆν εὐφραινομένους, ἀγαμένους μὲν ἑαυτούς, ἐπαινουμένους δὲ καὶ ζηλουμένους ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων;

These rewards from effort (ponoi) are worth little. But those people who toil (ponountas) in order to acquire good friends or to do down their enemies, or to become powerful in body and soul, and who run their household well and do well by their friends and benefit their country, how should we not think that these people toil in pleasure (ponein hēdeōs) for such goals and live joyfully (euphrainomenous), being contented themselves and being praised and envied by others?

The contrast mentioned at the beginning of the quotation is between these serious goals and the goal of hunting in the previous paragraph. The goals detailed here are worth a lifetime of effort since they are most valuable and lasting. What's most interesting, though, is the passage in bold since this seems to say that the very effort involved in itself a source of pleasure. It is not merely that the goal of being envied or having a well-run house and good friends is a source of pleasure worth purchasing in exchange for some toils. Socrates is surely being deliberately paradoxial by asserting that toil itself can be done in a pleasant way (ponein hēdeōs), and this is just the sort of thing that seems to have been attractive to the Cynics.

I'm not sure that Socrates here sees the distinction between ponos being itself pleasant and ponos being a means to greater pleasure in the long-run. At least, if he does see it he is not concerned to make much of it. Either way, he will have some ammunition against Aristippus and will be able to offer some argument against his chosen way of life which deals in terms which Aristippus himself might agree are valuable.

Eurosong fever

Come on, UK, it's time for us to make up our minds over which act we are to send as a sacrificial victim to the Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade. The choices are here for you to listen to, but it's not a great bunch. I reckon Michelle Gayle is the least awful but we'll still get no votes. Probably something to do with us invading various countries recently.

Ireland, however, have got the right idea. It might not be 'My lovely horse', but this is about what the competition deserves.