tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701878382459611272.post3347142714329002293..comments2023-08-15T06:32:58.350-05:00Comments on Philosophy KTL: The Obscurity of Benefit as the Proper Context for the Question of WealthAmos Hunthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00262758674894498892noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701878382459611272.post-87128879849906453842012-11-18T16:54:25.535-06:002012-11-18T16:54:25.535-06:00PF: Sounds like you're keeping up just fine. I...PF: Sounds like you're keeping up just fine. I'm sure any stumbling is due to the littered and poorly lit corridors of my mind, not to any deficiency on your part. As for the "build-up," that's more like the plaque on my teeth than the development of a Bach fugue. There's just that much bad crap you have to scrape through to get to the truth.<br /><br />I can see why my conclusion about the refutation of Cephalus might be disappointing. I think I need to hammer out a few distinctions to make it clear why I regard this conclusion as significant. I'll try to do that in a future post, but for now, let me sketch out a few things in outline. <br /><br />1. The finding of the dialectic is not sufficiently identified as the ignorance of the interlocutor (my fault: I said that the obstruction was "his own presumption.") In order to count as dialectical (as defined in the more recent post "A Step Back: 'What is Dialectic?'"), the refutation has to open a view to a translation of multiplicity into unity (or vice versa), and this view has to be more truthful than the original. I see that I haven't explained how knowledge of ignorance can be more than just self-knowledge (e.g., knowledge of "one's own presumption"), nor how the refutation of Cephalus would illustrate this knowledge. That's a job for future posts, I guess.<br /><br />2. Obscurity/ignorance is a more open-ended category than seeming/opinion. Thus the Socratic pattern of refutation engages in a dialog with the specific seeming/being interpretation of dialectic, criticizing its self-assured self-definition (without yet offering an alternative), even as it engages in more specific conversations with Socrates's interlocutors.<br /><br />3. Cephalus's particular ignorance of benefit directly corresponds to his confidence in money's power to preserve benefit. I hope to draw this aspect of the pre-dialectical position more clearly in the discussion of Polemarchus (who at least at first is led to see justice as equivalent with value-neutral securities such as money provides). <br /><br />Well, all of that is just to say, I haven't got this properly worked out yet. But if, as I hope, you stick around and keep supplying questions and objections, we might get there yet!Amos Hunthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00262758674894498892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701878382459611272.post-33223569054316710002012-11-17T22:47:40.245-06:002012-11-17T22:47:40.245-06:00Only read Book I this evening, and probably need t...Only read Book I this evening, and probably need to re-read, but your last two paragraphs lost me a little bit. I must confess, I was expecting something a bit more climactic after all this build-up. But let's see: Cephalus doesn't understand benefit because he thinks he knows what benefit is? His understanding is too morally ambivalent. (And "benefit" is such an elusive concept that we can almost assume someone is wrong who claims to know confidently what it is.) Enjoying reading your blog entries, even I'm stumbling along trying to understand ...oudeishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05667524928172537528noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701878382459611272.post-66276312043050570612012-11-10T21:40:48.265-06:002012-11-10T21:40:48.265-06:00Please let me know if it does!Please let me know if it does!Amos Hunthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00262758674894498892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-701878382459611272.post-81035527730262866162012-11-08T20:42:51.399-06:002012-11-08T20:42:51.399-06:00On the list of things I hadn't planned on doin...On the list of things I hadn't planned on doing this semester, rereading the Republic used to be one of them?<br /><br />Perhaps this time through, the way into the riddle will produce greater clarity.Kevinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03525029922349645016noreply@blogger.com