Felagund
1d ago
Felagund
3d ago
Any circumcision on someone who cannot consent is a human rights violation.
Do you think Jews violate human rights in circumcising their children?
Felagund
3d ago
Use xcancel.com .
Felagund
3d ago
If you haven't, I bet you'd be interested in learning about the state of Athenian democracy—Thucydides is pretty good, especially the Landmark edition.
I'm not sure to what extent I buy that the word democracy is different. Sure, it's different from what we call democracy now, in that we usually mean by that an often large representative republic, where we elect or appoint people to various functions, and they do the actual ruling, but their getting there is in some way dependent on popular appointing. Athenian democracy was far more direct: they had deliberative assemblies that were, if I remember correctly, open to all male citizens (note: citizen≠resident). Their trials were also before enormous juries, with hundreds of people. And this is all in a relatively small city-state. But I would think fundamentally, it mostly just has in view the form of government it has, in which there is (largely direct) popular rule, and the other tendencies you describe are just a result of the usual popular tendencies in such a setting. But yes, I agree that we find many of the same tendencies among people today, and a portion of this probably is downstream from our form of regime.
The setting of the Republic, as with the Platonic dialogues in general, is during the Peloponnesian war against Sparta, which Athens eventually lost. They were briefly ruled oligarchically, due to the Spartans, then democracy was restored, before they were conquered by Philip of Macedon, Alexander's father. During the Peloponnesian war, in most greek cities there were differing factions who sought democratic and oligarchic rule, promoted by the Athenians and Spartans respectively.
If I remember correctly, Socrates describes democracies as making philosophy more possible than most of the other regimes.
One other note: drawing of lots isn't all that crazy! We use random chance, to an extent, in our own jury process. Drawing lots has the downside of not letting you choose the most qualified people, and the upside of avoiding any negative effects from what sorts of people would seek out the position.
Felagund
3d ago
It would be democratic (greek democraticos/δημοκρατικος). Likewise for oligarchic, and tyrannic, though that last one isn't really a word.
I might render the paragraph starting in 545a, if I were trying to be pretty literal and keeping cognates when possible, something like, "Then after this, we must go through the worse: the lover of victory and lover of honor, according to the established Laconic [Spartan] polity, and again oligarchic, and democratic, and the tyrannic, so that seeing the most unjust, we might set him opposite to the most just, and our examination will be complete."
In book 8, with forms of the word δεμοκρατικος, there's no noun in 545a, 559d, 559e, 560a. In 545c, 557b, and sort of in 562a, there's forms of ανηρ. But I don't imagine there's much of a difference in sense—it's implicit what we're talking about throughout the whole book, I think: the men (andres) who correspond with the various regimes.
Felagund
3d ago
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All the instances I found were forms of ανηρ, or adjectives without a noun (Greek does that more frequently than English). ανδρες is the nominative plural of ανηρ. It's male, specifically. ανθροπος is just generically human, no sex implied.
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It's logos.
Felagund
3d ago
For @NeltonRushton: LSJ is short for Liddell-Scott-Jones. Perseus will also have Middle Liddell, which is a less complete dictionary, also by Liddell and Scott. I've seen the three sizes called the Little Liddell, the Middle Liddell, and the Great Scott (the LSJ).
Felagund
3d ago
Presumably, something like do what is best, what leads to a well-ordered society or at the philosophical form of the good, or something like that. But it's been a few years, don't trust everything I say here from memory.
Felagund
3d ago
A societal collapse downstream from politics seems more likely than any of your first three.
Felagund
3d ago
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Aristocracy: Do what is most rational.
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Timocracy: Do what gives me honor.
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Oligarchy: Do what gives me wealth.
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Democracy: Do what gives me pleasure. (Or was this something about liberty? I don't remember.)
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Tyranny: Do what keeps my rule. (Or was this something else about pleasure? I don't remember.)
At least, as I would roughly characterize the motivations of the ruling classes in the various regimes, from my (possibly faulty) recollection of Plato from several years ago.
How would you propose that kindness be an organizing principle of society?
Felagund
3d ago
The usual positions in later (I'm thinking e.g. early modern) political philosophy were (at least, I'm pretty sure):
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Some measure of virtue among those with power is indispensable for a well-functioning polity.
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Mixed regimes (that is, between monarchy, oligarchy, democracy), of some variety, are best.
I would be pretty careful about taking the portions of any dialogue and saying that this is definitively the opinion of Plato. I don't know that he actually intended anyone to form his proposed aristocratic regime. But I haven't looked at any of this for a few years, so I'd want to reread.
I believe I heard that Jowett can be a bit censorious at times, at least when things are being kinda gay. On the other hand, it's easy to obtain him, because he's not under copyright. He's the translator that I've read the most Plato from.
If you're using Perseus, make sure to take advantage of the ability to pull up the text in English down the side. And if you just click on the word in Perseus, you should be able to find the LSJ entry—Strong's is more targeted at biblical era Greek, which, while there'll certainly be a ton of overlap, will not always agree fully with the Greek of 400 years prior.
If you have Greek questions, I could probably attempt to answer them.
I think Allen Bloom's translation of the Republic is supposed to be quite good—if I remember correctly, he makes an effort to prefer literal to idiomatic translations, which decreases the extent to which interpretations are forced upon you. At the same time, I believe he also has plenty of notes to explain nuances, etc, and maybe an interpretive essay. But it's been some time since I looked.
The Straussian interpreters, including Bloom, put a lot of work into textual interpretation, which is kind of essential for Plato, because everything is in dialogue form, and it's not like it's always obvious whether Plato always agrees with whatever is being suggested.
I don't remember the details of what the Republic said all that well, but yes, many human problems recur. Their societies obviously had some pretty substantial differences from now, but there'd surely be a good bit in common. They were generally much smaller—e.g. Athens and the surrounding countryside, not the United States, even if they had colonies, other places paid tribute, and they could project force. Athenian democracy was also considerably more of a direct democracy, and less of a representative one. Of course, he's speaking in the abstract, but the one that they would have been familiar with, and, indeed, living under, was Athens—I imagine there would have been models in mind for all the regimes, except the ideal one.
If you read it, don't expect it to be purely political, though that's certainly in there. He also spends a lot of time on philosophy, and wants to pair regimes with states of the human soul.
Felagund
4d ago
And here I was, thinking this whole time that you were talking about directed acyclic graphs for some inscrutable reason.
Felagund
4d ago
And if you lump the fast students in with the slow students from the next year up, that still doesn't work well to sync the curricula, as now you have a classroom with two groups of people who vary quite dramatically in how quickly and readily they learn the subject.
Felagund
6d ago
I like having BurdensomeCount around, and would be sad to see him banned.
My opinion probably doesn't count for all that much, but I like to think I'm one of the relatively more measured users here.
Felagund
7d ago
Those posts are all heavily astroturfed—in many active subreddits, these are literally the top posts of all time. There were obviously a ton of bots.
Of course, reddit being reddit, they'd lean that way anyway, but there was plainly an organized campaign to do this at once across many subreddits, with bots involved.
Felagund
7d ago
The president of South Africa has signed a law to allow for land expropriation.
Felagund
8d ago
Thanks, I really appreciate the take, and will trust you know what you're talking about.
If there isn't an option currently and you can code, I bet you'd be welcome to design one for the site?
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