On Plato's Trojan Horse by Spencer R. Milton
- May 31
- 31 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
[In progress...] I am looking forward to an opportunity to think out evolutionary thought, justice and the soul.
The author has a reading of the Platonic cosmos of dialogues- excepting the Laws- which is going to be very helpful.
I have been trying to link the development of human communities to the modern anthropology discoveries, understanding these as developing together. The family is older than man. There were many kinds of humans, but our species was demarcated by domestication, and the avoiding of incest coincides with the linking of families in tribes. The totem systems are indeed very interesting, and stages of this development. We need to get a sense of the timeline involved as the background of these questions, and the exact dates matter less than the proportions and the development. The domestication of dogs may have occurred 3 times from wolves, the earliest in Northern Europe about 100-120,000 years ago Cats are rather a more a recent development, about 10,000 years ago, when grain was stored attracting rodents. The human estrus is as everyone knows different from all our nearest fellow primates and human types now extinct. This is VERY old, and intermediate stages seem to be lost, but it does seem to be related to the development of tribes and domesticaton, though the later seems relatively recent. Humans had fire for at least 2 million years- all the rare things are going to be lost to our archaeology- The oldest site with multiple hearths is only about 35,000 years old, in Czechoslovakia. Tribes are formed by linking families through marriages, and these tribes settled into the first villages coinciding with agriculture- when we learned to domesticate grain and fruit.
Genetic archaeology might take up the question of human communities- tribes and cities, looking for genetic markers. It may be that our type persisted as a rare line able to domesticate for millions of years, or it may be shockingly recent. But the avoidance of incest seems to demarcate or separate off our species from all other hominids, and this should be easy enough to find if we look for it.
The family then is the root of human community, while the tribe, village and city develop much later, and shockingly recently. While the family is older than man- so we know that the nature of man is not originally solitary scattered beasts, as Machiavelli and Hobbes must have it- man is by nature social or political, but for 2 million years this meant 'filial.' It is here that language developed, and as we watch children learn language and languages, it is clear that there is a natural disposition. While language, fire and families are 2 million years old and older, the political development of speech and reason is going to be much later. Aristotle also presents the political relations of ruled and rulers as intelligible in light of their originals in the family, with royal rule, statesmanship and despotic rule evident in the household or filial forms (Politics I).
As regarding the human estrus, the question arises as to how far the political development has sunk in to our nature. Cats bring their masters trophies, leaving mice in our pathway, apparently because in Egypt they were rewarded, perhaps for a thousand years, with fish for having killed rats and mice. The behavior became innate, and there are many examples regarding dogs bread for various purposes, and these purposes become a part of their innate behaviors. Beyond the obvious differences of male and female in child rearing, hunting and gathering, Aquinas notes, for example, that different kinds of men seem to be produced by nature for different political purpose- the most obvious difference being between those aimed toward war and those not, those intended to govern or counsel and those intended to work. Some are good at accounting, others at study, and one wonders in what other ways our political nature is evident in our innate differences.
These things become clear from what is a single line or comment in the Politics of Aristotle that the Cyclops each gave laws to their own families, while man is, rather, political. The Cyclops is very similar to a Neanderthal, and the one eye may be due to seeing that brow ridge from a distance. The site of the centaurs may similarly be resolved by considering how horsemen would appear to the Greeks who did not yet ride horses- in the days of Hercules and Theseus. For a long time after their contact with Scythians and Thessalians, the Greeks and Egyptians drove chariots, but still did not ride!
The mystery of the continuous rather than cyclical estrus that distinguishes the human system is not yet well explained- here especially as though intermediate stages are lost. How old is this change? We say that endogamy and exogamy correspond to these and later changes in man. The prohibition of fraternal incest coincides with the village, and these have been extended to include cousins as the city develops into the nation- a group of cities with genetic similarity relative to their neighbors. Remnants of fraternal incest include Egyptian kingships and Greek gods, and it may be addressed in the book of Tobit in a way. That these things are especially disturbing in psychological histories is the empirical indication that they are not healthy for the soul. Laws including the most ancient are usually upheld by reference to their natural ground in the health of the soul. Cannibalism and human sacrifice are by comparison more recent prohibitions, not pertaining to the tribe. These are abolished quite early in Egypt and Babylon, in the third millennium, and Abraham spreads the teaching to Canaan which he received from Melchizadek, about 1850 BC. Osiris traveled the world 25 years teaching to renounce cannibalism and practice agriculture instead. Prehistoric man is in many ways not beautiful, but quite ugly and disgusting!
While the village and tribe are more natural, cities have founders, or, are made by men. Machiavelli distills foundings into those by conquest and those by joining villages together, as did Theseus. But the centrality of the Oedipus question is then in one sense correct, if not as its author imagined. The image coincides with usurpation, if also kingship, as Plato seems to indicate in Books IX and VIII of the Republic. The usurper takes over the law, replacing the father illegitimately.
What he gets is that the fundamental debate regarding "evolution" assumes false imaginations on both sides- They are not reading Genesis, but imagining what it seems to say. Nor are the scientists considering formal and final cause.
p. 22: "The second sailing passage encodes the entire methodology of reasoning about function and purpose that Darwin and Dennett* would independently arrive at..." Socrates here addresses formal and material causes, with efficient and final causes to be spelled out by Aristotle, drawing the spatial "form and matter" out into time. In the Phaedo, formal and final are indistinct, as are material and efficient causes.The Darwinian Revolution is supposed to be that the species change or are not eternally the same, but come to be in what is like a tree of life. The forms themselves grow. But just as Darwin is not an atheist, he is not a materialistic metaphysician, either. Darwin himself is not a Darwinian, nor did he have Mendalian genetics as more than a suspicion. The discussion of purpose centers around teleological explanations of evolution- the giraffe's neck grows long from reaching, not accidental variation. Des Chardan tried to uphold this Lamarkian view, but he fails. AI answers:
"
Dennett: "Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all." And that's a very unsettling thought for many people."
Because the forms change by accidental variation and natural selection rather than an obvious direct intention, evolutionists think, in one sense, that form itself has been explained away. Yet it is the same mystery. Physics can teach that the table is not "solid" in every sense, but cannot explain the difference between any two things, including the wooden chair and table- let alone the ocelot and badger. Similarly- consider the wing, which emerges in 5 or 6 distinct lines of "evolution." This is by accidental variation indeed, but shaped as it is by the nature of earth and sky- what there are, as well as what is going on in the ecosystem. That life can become intelligent may be similar, if the human things differ dimensionally.
p. Offhand, the seeds planted by the dialectician are not about evolution, but about the soul, and their growth is not by a calculative "decoding," now fashion after"The Bible Code and the Da Vince code. It is rather by examining the things assumed about ourselves and the nature of justice and the rest of virtue.
About "esoteric" writing and logographic necessity- its arithmetic and geometric aspects are not intentional in terms of the calculative or the math faculties. The primary meanings are conveyed not by calculations but analogies. The author alludes to this in saying that Plato borrowed "the Elusian frame: the two level structure" from the Elusian mysteries (p. 21).
In writing, the center, for example may indicate something left out, if it is off center, and so be an indicator* to the writer- but he is focused on the meaning, the logos, not the geometry. *like cross checking a math equation- + and X by subtraction and division- cool itself!
a second danger is reducing the practical aspect of Plato to eugenics, and even partisan eugenics, as though a technology, and not philosophizing, were the way to increase justice in the world.
This is the opinion with which we begin, though, and the book will help us think out.
The problem with eugenics is that humans do not know what the aim is- do not have wisdom or a wise man.* We repeat that love's eugenics are cruel enough!* Domestication of humans would require a god, who is to man as man is to the animals.
p. 15:
The soul might be form with form as matter: consider: Living things are living form over matter, F/M, in MANY senses all at once. Organ systems are wholes but not organisms, etc. Now, if the soul is by nature self reflective, this might yield form over form, and be immortal, a resurrectable body. We would not know it if it were true, and cannot know such a thing is false. Our physics cannot explain the difference between any two objects!
Like a song on the radio- soul would be the faculty, not the content- unless you are, like, Hegel.
p. 46: The poets are rejected also because what they say is false: The gods do not lie, change shape or cause anything but good.
p. 51: The poets will be permitted to return to the best regime when they can make an argument that they do not flatter and water the appetites. We say Shakespeare does that- writes poetry admissible in the best regime.
p. 55 How is it again that the evolutionary reading resolves the difficulty and gives the reason reason that the poets are expelled from the best regime? Because of group selection? Why would group selection not equally favor keeping false and lying poets if they unite a people in relation to other cities and nations? Group selection is not going to resolve the difficulties in the Republic. Plato does not reduce philosophy to biology as the modern sociobiologists do, and as our modern psychology does, with grave consequences.
p. 56, What can it mean to say that the form of the good is "the principle by which natural selection determines what is good for organisms shaped by it?" Pragmatism: Truth is what works? This leaves aside the question of fitting what to what- the organism to its environment. We get what is the environment of animals- but what is the "environment" of humans? Surely it includes logic, math, and justice, to which we must adapt.
"The good" is very difficult, the last thing seen in any study, Irving Wasserman would say. There are categories like "doctor," and then there is "good doctor," set over the category doctor, like not just ANY doctor, and the best example best shows the nature of the thing.
There is the question of whether the good is a being or rather a relation, such as the fitting.
In Genesis, what is "good," when God saw that it was good? Did good come to be? It is a name of God, the "Good One," (Luke 18?) we say. We also like to ask, "on what day was water created- Genesis is vast. In the study, there is confusion between God as the good for US, the highest object (?) of desire, most honored- idolatry being as Tillich says to take something other to be Most High, and something else- good in himself, the cause of all being in overflowing. The good of the whole, in relation to the whole as it is with our deficiency.
It does seem that Plato and Socrates thought the particular forms are eternal, and thought of the world and human things as having always been this way- and that Lyle's geology of vast time and changes as well as Darwin's tree of life would have been news to him.
It will always be a question whether the beings that come to be on the tree of life try to survive in order to reproduce or reproduce in order to come to be.- whether the gene is the instrument or the primary organism, whether the chickens came before the egg. We say the goal is the chicken.
We shall see if the reference to geometry sheds light on the nuptial number.
Ion
The lodestone is the same as that coping stone set atop dialectic (Republic, 534e3): It is nous, and we say that that lodestone of the poets is the unconscious nous. The knowledge in the soul is the archetypes of Jung, and hence the cause of inspiration, or one cause, is the knowledge somehow in the soul of each.
The assertion that Homer wrote as a natural philosopher may conflict with the assertion that he writes from inspiration, pp. 71; 70).
p. 73 Neither is Plato a general, but Alexander did not know what to do with the world once he conquered it, and we find all political types to be similar- the general can think of little beyond make them revere and obey me, with the ends being by default whatever I happen to want."
Phaedrus, p. 122 The four madnesses are not mapped exactly onto the divided line, but are all kinds of poetic inspiration as described on the same "level" in the Ion.. These are prophecy or "mantike, heroic lyric poetry, tragic poetry, and love. Our psychiatry will not even acknowledge let alone study these, and cannot distinguish divine from other forms of madness- and these are often mixed. p. 124, "...not a malfunction. Evidence of what you are."127:
Love is the noblest form of divine madness- the force [?] that lifts the soul, restores its wings, and carries it toward truth. From this definition the charioteer myth followed naturally: ...every element grew from the definition in the way an organism grows from seed....it was alive because it was true.
If reason has desires of its own, what does this mean regarding nature? Could it have an environment of logos, as the body has of visible things?
Three check marks, though, for the study of Phaedrus: p. 125: reason has desire of its own., as does the heart, in seeking love and glory or honor, which is the appearance or manifestation of excellence. Romantic love appears to be love of the beautiful, but love itself seeks the child.
In the Phaedo, Socrates says he feared blinding as when one looks at the sun during an eclipse- when it has the moon in front of it. Natural philosophy looks to animal and material causes of human things because the body is in the way. This is what it means, turning of the whole soul, and Christian Socratics can say the way of ascent is first penance. In the allegory, materialist natural philosophy would be an unchained prisoner digging and looking about the floor and walls inside the cave- for the causes of the artifacts paraded. Incidentally, what is it we say are the causes of these?
What could it mean to say that natural selection is the good according to Plato? What is common to all good things or instances of good is that they are selected? That survival is good? This could be no more so than the opposite, since death is also natural selection. Weak organisms are bad? Again, the Nazis were inspired by Darwin to grave cruelties, justified by the Thrasymachean argument that justice is the interest of the stronger. And how will justice be selected for if injustice is no more good than bad? Darwinism seems to teach that survival and reproduction- the animal ends of man are the serious natural ends, not because of natural selection, but because the humans studying it are not following virtue as the golden thread, the logos of which would be the light within the cave.
p. 161: The forms are the medium- the water in which you see the reflection of the sun rather than destroying your eyes by straining at it directly, teleological reasoning, reasoning about function and purpose and what things are for, is not a retreat from reality. It is the only method by which reality at that scale can be approached at all." You cannot perceive natural selection directly any more than you can perceive the sun. What you can do is reason about what it produces- about the functional organization it leaves behind, the structures that persist and the structures that dissolve....Natural selection- the good- cannot be directly perceived by any organism it shaped.
What if one were to say gravity is the good- see all things tend downward. And no one can see gravity. How a thing comes to be and the forces acting upon it cannot serve to distinguish any one being from any other, nor can it account for the forms- again the example of the shape of the wing in 5 different lines of accidental variation, is a good example.
pp. 155-157* We want to look up what Aristotle says about Empedocles. This is a very nice section.
Kinship selection adds much to understanding relatives and relations. We have something like a 1/2 genetic interest in offspring of a sibling, etc, explaining proximity and assistance. Faction and cooperation in families will be very interesting. That we call a friend "brother" shows both the truth and the limitations of the biological understanding. The avenging of crimes against a family member is also interesting from the sociobiology view. Justice is ultimately related to to all humanity qua human, and the things of family and city turn out to be "somewhat closer to the body," that is, what is called "vulgar virtue." A difference in focus at least between Aristotle and Plato's Republic is the elevation of ethical virtue in Aristotle. In Plato, virtue is knowledge. But Socrates knows his ignorance, and hence in one reasoning would know himself to be "vicious." But Socrates is the best of men!
p. 195: There are bees and ants and wings, "eusociality" is what they want to call these "superorganisms" where the individuals become as cells of a hive, and the queen becomes the reproductive organ. But there are differeny kinds of loose and tight collectives- herds of mammals, but no eusociality. The city by contrast cannot reproduce, because it is not by nature as the hive is, and while bees make their hives by nature, innately or by genes, as the biologists want to say, humans make the laws for cities, and these are each different- artifacts that are not by nature. That is custom, and we agree that custom or habit can in some way become over time second nature and then nature.
The filial root of human political nature and political ethics is shown when we say all men are our "brothers," or should be treated as such- not, of course, as Cain treated Abel, or Romulus Remus, but as one ought treat a brother. The hyena offspring murder their own siblings.
Kin selection as well as the avoidance of incest requires that the relations be recognized by the living generation- as in usual circumstances it is.That the human soul is appalled and harmed even by accidental incest indicates something about this soul of sapiens, and we say this is related to the change from filial ti tribal to civic man. In psychiatry, this becomes VERY important to understand. An early theory of Freud was that molestations were behind the "neuroses" he was observing, and we should note the difference between incestuous and non incestuous trauma. Again, we say the illness of the soul is especially the perpetrator, while psychiatry treats mostly the victims. It is a kind of trauma that isolates victims from communities. These things are obvious to common sense, if our psychology cannot address them.
p. 183: There is no Greek word for "conscience-" it is a Latin word. This seems to mean not that the Greeks HAD no conscience, but that the word is contained within reason and nous- and THAT has many implications for how we are reading reason and nous.
We say that cns is nascent nous.
The question opening the Euthyphro is whether it is pious for him to be prosecuting his father. One can imagine a county prosecutor called upon to set aside the family and do the same in a case of murder. Readers and Soctrates too seem to consider this to be obvious- that Euthyphro should not prosecute his own father
Chinese and Russian communism would seem on this account indistinguishable from the best regime, despite killing millions of their own people, especially if justice IS cooperation. But then, how could one distinguish between left and right versions of cooperation? Plato could of course as easily- or more easily- be accused of secretly teaching communism- the title to property is not law but "wisdom," etc- which belongs to those who know the march of history- even what shadows are likely to pass by and in what order- one could say- but it would not be true. We could say all the same things about Plato supporting Marxism- but they would not be true. Our problem is to demonstrate that these things are not true, and this is more than simply showing that they are not demonstrated. Can we show that Plato was NOT a materialist simply lieing and hiding behind what the world has mistaken to be the distinction between Socratic and pre-Socratic philosopy?
In the Protagoras section, the speech regarding the origin of justice and shame, a Biblical parallel is the law given to Noah, the first law, establishing the death penalty not for being judged to be a psychopath or sociopath, but for murder (Genesis 9:6). The reason is not selective advantage, but rather the same as in Plato, we say- that the soul is an image of God. The imago Dei is the same as that which distinguishes men from animals, and why, while killing an animal may be wrong it is not murder.
Natural selection is held to be the cause of each thing that has come to be, and when there is an example that there is more than cooperation to justice, the United States emphasising individualism rather than cooperation- preserving human liberty- this has not only been a match for totalitarianism but was for a while, and could be again, the world's only superpower- the evolutionists will say that these things are simply going to be eliminated in the future, by being selected against. That is, the explanation that things are caused by natural selection is not "falsifyable."
note: I'v been trying to find our "sophist" note back a bit. We Straussians have this basic 4 part account: a) Greek Natural philosophy undermined tradition by the appeal to nature rather than the gods as causes. b) The result is the sophists, who, believing there is no cosmic support for justice, advocate injustice. c) This compels Socrates to "help out when justice is being spoke of badly." Socrates assumes natural philosophy, and hides that to protect and cultivate tradition, recognizing that philosophy has harmed the city. But through the human, Socrates discovers a new kind of the study of nature- so we get the account of the "cause" of his remaining in prison- and Socratic replaces pre-Socratic philosophy. The Discovery of nature (evolves or) turns into natural right- and the motion is repeated in modernity.
What Socrates does is to combine the concern of the poets regarding the human things with the appeal to nature, resulting in the quest for the nature of the human things, through the laws and poems- beliefs and images that make up opinion. He appeals from the ancestral to the good, from custom to nature which proves to be their source, and to solicit opinion. An example is this: we study romantic love in every culture, as a human thing, as distinct from advocating a particular form of marriage. But through the particular forms of marriage, things about the nature of marriage appear, and this psychology proves to be the basis of any genuine psychiatry.
The wing is selected for, but it is first because of the nature of earth and sky that the aerodynamics works- selection does not cause that, but operates under it.
Insect wings do not use an appendage but leave the 6 intact! Animals ALL make wings out of appendages. No microorganisms have wings.
Similarly, justice and cooperation- two different things- work because justice is true.
But injustice also works.
I am thinking of the cooperation and indeed a form of justice and filial fidelity among gangsters- the justice within a band of thieves. Watch how the Don punishes defection! What if an underling were to steal from him, or even withhold money! Oh, but do not commit injustice or even accidentally harm his family, or any that ask for his protection!
A possible answer to this would be that it is subordinate cooperation within a supervening defection, if one were to continue to assume that justice and cooperation or devotion to a common good are identical.
There is justice in foreign policy, and contrary to Hobbes & co, it is of the highest importance. Nations are punished in this world, says George Mason, because they cannot be punished in the next.
Note: I would like to tell Milton about the chair, and about the frost on the window.
The chair is made of wood. But what is the shape of the chair
made of?
Smash the chair- you still have all the wood,
but no chair.
What a thing is depends on the shape, and not the wood.
The table is made of the same wood. What is the difference?
They say that every molecule in our bodies- even in the DNA- is different every 7-10 years. What is the same is the form. But we do not think that plants are immortal therefor. One does wonder, though, about form reflecting upon itself, as about the flowering of the tree of life. Self knowledge may not be unrelated to immortal life.
Artificial things are easier to see regarding shape and purpose because we are the cause, and so can know this better, or in a more immediate way. Living animals are beyond wonder in form and purpose and distinction, of badger and beaver, maple and oak. To speak of a designer may be an understatement.
Natural philosophy cannot account for the difference between any 2 kinds of things, or any two things in our world at all, with only 4 elements and energy. Physics has not progressed since Aristotle.
Earth air water and fire are the 3 conditions of matter, solid, liquid and gas, + energy. We say since matter and energy are inter-convertible, energ-ism is a form of materialism. There is no matter without form- unless that were dark matter or something- but there is form without matter, as shown simply enough in math, but there are KINDS of kinds.
Cooperation may be different from justice. I am thinking of the co
The frost on the window grows from the natures of glass and ice crystal, and maybe a bit of dust.
Plato printed the critique of Homer in Republic, which would be more likely to get one killed than the teaching of Empedocles.
p. 247: citing Protagoras: ...and let it be a law: anyone incapable of sharing in justice and shame shall be put to death as a plague upon the city."
Oddly the appeal from tradition to nature first undermines justice, but then is cited as the authority for the most shameful injustice. Eugenics and culling of populations depends fist upon the assumption that that one knows- or a government can know- what justice is, and invariably they do not really know. The appeal to nature results in the most extreme imposition of the artificial.
We say Plato wrote dialogues not to hide a secret teaching for selfish purposes while destroying a city, but so that the teaching of Socrates would not be lost- given that philosophy cannot be written.
In reading, the reader can try to distinguish what it is shown that Plato thought or hid that the initiated see and what the author thinks about the things in the dialogues. Has the thesis been demonstrated?
The argument of the book would seem to have the same problem as that in Book of the Republic- the greatest selective advantage would or at least might come to one who appears to cooperate and is never found out.
Justice is not an external rule but in accord with our nature (back cover), yet the city must (may) kill defectors (p. 252)?
Review: Plato's Horse's Trojan: an answer to "Platos Trojan Horse"
We say rather that Plato wrote with care also to protect people from the harmful effects of natural philosophy on common opinion. There is yet no reason to think he is a materialist natural philosopher sneaking his own ideas into perpetuity and actually in truth advocating the destruction of the polis in totalitarian cruelty. The conclusion is that common to both forms of totalitarianism- that the nation- not a city- is justified in acting with the cruelty worse than any found in the animal kingdom. It is encouraging that Milto repeatedly upholds the good and just, but according to his argument this may be, as he says of Plato's formal causes, merely an appearance hiding his true aim of promoting his own. The argument is similar to Hegel in that there is nothing above the state, and no way of distinguishing just and unjust "cooperation."
The book Plato's Trojan Horse is worth reading even if the thesis is not demonstrated. Despite the use of sensationalism in order to survive itself in the harsh market of written ideas, the book is very helpful in attempting to read the dialogues as a whole, and posing the challenge of trying to say what is correct, and if the thesis is wrong, why. Socratic philosophy as a whole assumes Greek natural philosophy and the development of the sophists, challenging Socrates to help out when justice is being spoke of badly (Republic II). So it would be `quite an open question what of natural philosophy enters into the thought and cosmos of Plato. We can work on the difference between form as an explanation of kinds and what it is that Darwin and Empedocles propose. Plato knew about the problem posed by inventions- new kinds, and the new kinds in nature would be a variant of that difficulty, which he may well have left as a question along with those in the Parmenides, where the "forms" are questioned. Direct theorizing about nature may have been more playful, if Plato followed Socrates in holding that we cannot know about those things in some final or authoritative way. We can surely have a lot of fun thinking about them!
What the author offers that is new may not be what he claims to offer. What if evolutionary theory were simply irrelevant to the question of "selfishness?" The group selection aspects of the human condition are well worth considering- but these make only make clear more of the body and not the soul. What if the biologists and the consequent popular teaching replacing ethics with survival of the fittest have only thought Darwin to imply selfishness because they themselves are of predominantly animal natures covered over with a thin layer of tradition? What Milton has done is to shake up the animal assumption by focusing on the opposite- cooperation and the genetically equally advantageous aspects of group selection. What has not been shown is that justice and injustice can be reduced to self interest versus cooperation, nor that Plato understood that forms evolve through natural selection and applied this to justice and politics, retaining the reduction of the human things to materialist natural philosophy.
That cooperation is a sort of vicarious self interest, and altruism hence explainable on the assumption that survival is our highest goal in every part of the soul seems to be the assertion of the sociobiologists.
Is justice cooperation, or is it the well ordered soul and city? Do these cohere, so that the well ordered souls are cooperative? Do the craftsmen have well ordered souls ruled by reason? Is the well ordered soul not cooperative in the best regime, but uncooperative in every regime that has ever been actual?
When there is an example of cooperation in injustice- which might be true of every actual city and nation- the argument wants to say that that is not cooperation but defection, since cooperation is justice. The question then would simply devolve to what is cooperation, in this new synonymous meaning of the word. The truth may be that defection is also advantageous, as is mimicry and paracitism, as these have obviously also evolved so as to be with us today still. One may succeed by justice- which is also more fun- and one might succeed by injustice. The problem with the argument, though, is that cooperation is different from justice.
Is a thing good because it is selected or selected because it is good? Are these two different? But that reminds of active and passive carrying and carried, in Euthyphro. Never mind that things less good might be selected.
We were arguing for example that Congress must regulate the internet so that the unscrupulous companies are not those that succeed due to their selective advantage, gained for example by selling voter data.
In a famous example of Spartan virtue, a woman is told her 7 sons have died in battle, and she beats the slave messenger for telling her about he filial misfortune before telling he whether the Spartans won the battle. Cooperation is in various groups at once, and cooperation in one is defection in another. family, tribe, village city state nation and humanity are all conflicting collectives, where cooperation in one can be injustice in others, and people will cite the groups as universal principles- do we believe the Spartan would betray her family? Or the whole of Greece? For Sparta?
...We tell the atheists, when anything becomes better, Where does that additional good come from? So, let every actual city be agreed to be unjust, these can still become more just, and that additional justice must come from somewhere, eh?
...The book does that well, because the truth of natural selection does not imply "social Darwinism," nor that survival and reproduction are the serious ends of man, nor that justice is the advantage of the strongest, who survive and are "fit". But for the animal part of man..
The animal self interest of groups will not get us out of the problem that justice and self interest are different, separate things- while the humans all look for justice and self interest to coincide. Humans have evolved to do what Russia is doing in Ukraine- expand!
One must like, though, the idea that justice is natural to man as sky is to birds, because it is there. One could SAY the evolution of wings MADE the sky, but it would be false. How can we show that?
I have some new thoughts on this, there is of course a difference between the questions of whether the evolutionary hypotheses are true and whether Plato thought, encoded and communicated any such thing. We think the thought is partly true and partly false, and that Plato thought the forms of life to be permanent as are the equal and such, and the Darwinian revolution is that these are not permanent, but grow as on a tree of life.
Another two questions to separate are justice as a character and virtue of a soul, and justice as a quality of the adminisration of a city, the laws and orders or constitution of a city,
The qustion of the extent to which justice is even inherited and inheritable has now appeared. We say that justice is the health of the soul by nature, but that there other was of succeeding evolutionarly regarding bodily prosperity, namely, injustice, and that in fortune and prosperity- amid what appears to be a lack of Providence- one may prosper or find ruin either way, but what the unjust way lacks is justice, and this is necessary to the health of the soul, the most important part of happiness. In a family of 10 offspring, one will get different natures, and these can be cultivated more and less. What appears is that the bodily characteristics of strength and beauty ARE passed on, while the proportions of mankind regarding justice are basically constant- and influenced by our efforts at cultivation. WE promote the just and try to correct the unjust, but the bodily nature does not seem much to care.
We actually do see difference in region and family of different people following the law more closely than others. Crime often runs in families. Thus the reason your decisions in this life determine the quality of the next life in the myth of Er which is mythicized
Show more
Replying to @PlatosTrojanH @SrNkhoma40444 and @YouTube
I will definitely be more systematic this time through Book X- I did not even remember Odysseus was in there! A friend once said Er is as we always have the possibility to choose anew by ascent to the intelligible.
But if we say justice is natural to the soul, due to a natural hierarchy of the parts and ends of the soul, and the natural things evolve, does that not seal the argument? The traits of the soul including justice must be cultivated by culling and breeding that ignores such qualms as that forbidding cruelty- and this in the name of justice?
The alternative hypothesis is that while the bodily characteristics
Amazon Review draft:
This book is very helpful in taking up the questions of evolutionary theory and philosophy, as well as for trying to discern the question of the Platonic cosmos, or how the 36 or so dialogues might fit together. The attempt to say why the thesis is false - that Plato is a materialist and even an Empedoclean evolutionist with a proposal for mankind that may be indistinguishable from fascism- provokes certain fundamental distinctions. One is that between the Socratic and the pre-Socratic philosophers- what is special about Socrates- and the challenge to say, then, just what this might be. Milton suggests that the Socratic turn to form and function is a lie covering a materialist truth, and we are challenged to demonstrate that this is not so.
It can be said, though, that the author does not demonstrate, but assumes his thesis- bees are mentioned, and ants, and the conclusion drawn that the reincarnation of sociable types of humans as social animals is "encoding" some Platonic sociobiology, because we understand bees and ants in these terms, and man in animal terms. Not that Plato, or Socrates, did not find bees and ants to be interesting. Socratic philosophy presupposes and retains the attempt of the pre-Socratic philosophers to appeal to nature rather than the gods as causes. He studies man in light of human nature. What has not been shown is that Plato understood the key point of the Darwinian revolution, that the kinds change, including the natural kinds of life, and did not rather hold that these are eternal. The author simply assumes both justice and materialism. Straussian exotericism does not justify literally any interpretation!
The author does not mean "encode" literally, and the reader will wait in vain for numerical values of Greek letters in Plato's gematria. He simply means every sort of allegorical speaking. And by lie, he does not even mean the ignoble sort that usually carry the class title, lying for a base self interest, as in the "Father of Lies," or that between the soul and itself. But we say, rather, that Plato was faced with the problem that philosophy cannot be written, yet wanted the way of life of Socrates to survive, and so after burning his tragedies, took up again this highest art form of drama, showing the speaker in "3D," as it were, together with the words spoken in a particular circumstance. Aside from this, we say it is slander to say Plato cared much for his own interest, his own fame or "immortality" or the continuance of his own private things in some evolutionary epistemology of ideas in the sense of opinions.
The best thing about the book is the reversal it performs on the usual reasoning from Darwin and the truth of evolution to the supremacy of animal appetite and selfish interest. Evolution rather implies that justice is natural to man, because of group selection. What Milton has done is to shake up the animal assumption by focusing on the opposite- cooperation and the genetically equally advantageous aspects of group selection. The usual conclusion drawn from the Darwinian revolution is that self-preservation and reproduction are the serious ends of man, that is, the ends of the animal appetite. Not only every kindness, but the reasons for the laws as against murder and rape, these seem to disappear. At first a "social Darwinism" seemed to conclude that certain cruelties- such as the English leaving the Irish to starve in the potato famine, were natural, and so should be allowed to occur, or the harshness of nature even be imitated. Sociobiology then seemed to explain the kindnesses and the laws by devolving these into group self-interests- assistance to relatives in truth a matter of one's own genetic self interest, etc. But in truth, that animals change and species originate by accidental variation and natural selection may imply nothing of the sort- it may be neutral regarding justice and self interest, offset by the truth that justice is required for- or at least helpful to, cooperation. The conclusion may be due to the dominance of the animal that goes with materialistic man. The pen-named writer Milton reverses this implication, assuming that justice is real and is the natural structure of the soul, with which we can either live in accord, or suffer the consequences. And this is the root of natural right- the justice by which unjust laws are indeed unjust. The trouble then becomes to distinguish cooperation and group self-interest from justice, not to mention the conflicts of group interest in the various groups to which all humans belong simultaneously- family, tribe, village, city, state, nation and humanity. An example is when family interests conflict with those of the nation. Group self interest can and does conflict with justice, and the city- almost every city that has actually been, might be as a band of robbers when considered in light of the group humanity. Hence from a certain high view, group self interest is also a cause of the vulgarity of what Plato calls vulgar or non-philosophic virtue.
What has not been shown is that Plato encoded or thought any such Empedoclean thing. Plato rather may have tried to benefit- or at least not harm- both groups and especially individuals by making them more just, and not by labeling all the uncooperative as defectors, then enacting some eugenic culling of humanity to make justice as men breed dogs. The best city is brought to be by education, which is similar and different from domestication in general, but not the same as breeding, as of the breeds of dogs. Milton would be correct if he were to note that eugenics is practiced among the approximately 1/10th of the citizens that are guardians in the best regime, who have no families but are like warrior priests. But he is not correct, we say, if he says this implies that Plato thought or taught that justice was to be promoted by a eugenics of cooperators and defectors. If Socrates is right in his Apology, and the city here being unjust, Milton must say the city is the defector, while the one standing alone is the cooperator, because justice has been identified with the cooperation it often, but not always, facilitates.
Plato put a Trojan on his horse, as did the other Socratic philosophers, or rather did not need one. This means that they were not concerned at all with the proliferation of their own ideas, but with virtue and philosophy as a way of life. One could say that such self- transcendence as is presupposed by philosophy is simply what evolved in ancient Greece, caused by natural selection to be what makes men happy, but that is no longer so. We, rather, think this really has a formal and final cause, as well as the efficient causes among which are those identified by the theorists of evolution." This is indeed a new kind of natural philosophy, one in which the nature of the soul is more important than the nature of the sun and whether it is in truth not a god but a burning stone (See Leo Strauass, The History of Political Philosophy, p.5). The human things are, rather, the key to understanding "all things"
Later thoughts:
I have got an argument as it swam by, while sleeping with Philebus (who is not that cute): I have just started on it, but want to say it anyway. That health itself is a goal of living things does not evolve and become more and less in each generation, but pertains equally...
·
·
to each evolving generation, while the particular shapes of the body are what changes? Similarly, life and death itself pertain to each, and we do not see any species evolving to become deathless in body, nor any becoming more alive than any others in that sense, so that this
·
3)...does not change, but as a quality of life stays just the same in each generation, but what evolves and changes is the particular shape of the organisms, equally subject to death, and each very much and just as much alive? What if justice is the health of the soul, ...
Show replies
4) and so what evolves is the shape itself, and with that the shape of the species- not how much it is subject to life, health disease and death? 10 kids 8 will be fit and reproduce, but none are more alive when they are alive, nor is health more when they are healthy,
·
5) but the particular beings are more healthy. So health itself does not evolve, while the shapes of the being are more and less fit. Fitness itself does not evolve, at least in this sense, and justice in one meaning may be a thing like that. Some wings fly better than others,..
6) but what it takes for a wing to fly does not change, because earth and sky are the same, one heavier and other lighter. In each generation,... but flight can become better in each generation, and it still follows that justice in this sense- the shape- would "evolve."
·
7) so we have two different senses, and one survives the argument still, but the other does not. I think it escaped because flight is a characteristic, while health achieved by flying is the same...alt
My machine seized up! It insisted I choose a Gif! although...the particular shapes change, 8 of the 10 kids will not become more or less subject to the facts of health and disease, if each is more and less healthy... men can still become more and less suited to justice.
He does not get the distinction between health as it does not change and the health of particular organisms, which of course does.- materialism
So, not the argument does not get the difference between the justice in particular characters and justice itself, which as air is to all wings, does not change. But if justice is the health of the soul, the argument is good.
Comments