Why did Socrates refuse to write any books.

Socrates refused to write any books. One must wonder why especially in the modern world when every "great mind" seems so intent on showing the brilliance of their intellect in some grand treatise.
Its food for thought.

Perhaps he knew that if he were to write a book, a critical commentary on it would soon follow.

But he did die for his beliefs I don't think he really would have cared about "a critical commentary". He certainly didn't care about hemlock.

I've often wondered how much Socrates was a creation of Plato.

I suppose we will never know for sure he could be a product of a ribald imagination, a courageous character, a philosopher martyr.

I personally find it useful to believe that he did live.

Because what is philosophy if it is not useful?

what is philosophy if it is not useful?

Useless? - Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)

I think you do have to consider that notions of literacy (and authorship) were very different in classical Greece than they are today. The oral tradition was still pretty strong. You see this in Plato; even though he chose to write down his philosophy, he actually attacks the written word on several occasions. It's probably significant that he chose the dialogue form for his works. And Socrates certainly wasn't the only thinker of the time who didn't write down his ideas. I don't recall that any of the Pre-Socratics did much writing either. And the Sophists were mostly orators.

It's hard for us looking back to think that these authors weren't writing for posterity when they've become so crucial to the traditions of our society, but I suspect the Greeks must have had other ideas about their place in history -- not that they weren't pretty arrogant in their own way or weren't concerned with fame (Homer!), but it was embedded in a very different context.

You make some good some good points and its very easy to miss the historical context element to these philosophers form of expression. But I do think that modern philosophy really has forgotten the back and forth element to philosophy as discussion and dialogue and discussions as having a life of their own rather than simply lorded over by one supreme being(an author).

As one poster just said Philosophy is useless.
Now that is a tragedy, because what do the lost souls do when they want to find meaning in life?

Become Christians?

If you ask me something over the ages has been lost in translation.

Doesn't the question of what we know or can know about Socrates, and his relationship to Plato's (& Xenophon's) texts, point to a general problem of all historiography? namely that, after our death, the only evidence of our existence is in texts - often those of others.

And this applies not just to great figures of the distant past (Buddha, Socrates, Yeshua of Nazareth, Alexander the Great ... ) but to Napoleon, Joseph Stalin and the person down the road who died just yesterday. The texts are either linguistic texts written on a range of materials, or 'texts' dug up (literally or metaphorically) by archaeologists/archivists/descendants - material possessions, bones, items buried with, and so on. Whatever the nature of the 'text', it has to be 'read' - that is, interpreted or 'trans-lated' (carried across to us in the present).

This is what Derrida meant when he said that there is nothing outside the text ("Il n'y a pas de hors-texte").

Then why does Socrates take such a grand place almost as the godfather of western intellectual thought. Once one person talks about philosophy another person talks about uncertainties.

But uncertainties are hardly a bedrock that we can put a positive constructive set of values upon are they?

"Socrates refused to write any books."

So did a lot of other great philosophers/religious teachers. Confucius didn't write anything- his disciples wrote down his sayings. The same is true of Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed.

"I've often wondered how much Socrates was a creation of Plato."

I've wondered about that too. I guess that's the problem with not writing your own books, but letting others write for you.

Just because Socrates is - for us - a character (dramatis persona) in Plato's narrative (& to a tiny extent in Xenophon's) doesn't prevent him from being an important figure (an exemplum) in our narrative of our intellectual origins.

Nor does it say anything, one way or the other, about whether he 'really' existed or not. He exists for us here and now as a figure of the past.

And maybe it also means that true wisdom is better to be discussed in dialogue form between people rather than written out in grand treatises.

We have to have more respect for the word not just in the book form but in everyday conversation.

> 9 "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte"

And even when one is alive and able to comment, I often find there is a large gap between one's own understanding of one's meaning and that which others may glean.

And to complicate matters further, people have imperfect self-understanding, and can represent outwardly only a portion of their inner mentalities.

"I would be intereted, Dennis,(1) in what is your source for saying that he actually REFUSED to write a book.
Iʻm a classicist, but not a real expert on Plato.

One of my professors, Eric Havelock emphasized that in Platoʻs time writing and reading had not really caught on, in a way comparable to other cultures, and were popularly regarded with suspicion. Aristophanes who wasnʻt exactly an ignoramus, ridiculed Euripides for having a personal library. An Athenian 5th-4th century L T wouldnʻt have attracted many members. And, outside of Athens, we can assume that a majority of the population was illiterate.
Itʻs even possible* that Socrates did write,
but Plato didnʻt think that a written record was important enough to bring into
his depiction of Socrates. Writing wasnʻt all that prestigious, or even respectable. As far as we can deduce, Socrates was a self-effacing person, and Plato wasnʻt. The oral tradition was in full swing, but perhaps Plato thought, "If thereʻs any writing to be done, Iʻll do it."
And then, Paul and the earlier disciples are not on record as having made a search for anything
that Jesus may have written. Similar, I suppose, is the case of Buddha. Muhammadʻs case is a little different, and I think not comparable, because Islamic belief is that he
he took a text "written" by God and dictated by Gabriel, so there would be no case of a search for Muhammadʻs own writings.

*pendng what what you may document of the specific refusal.

A very short introduction to Socrates.

It just seems to me in this line of posts that many of the "great souls" haven't written books and then again most people haven't written books am I seeing a connection here?

"A Very Short Introduction to Socrates" (17)

Thanks for the reference. Iʻll be looking for that
on one of my rare visits to the University Library. The Public Library System here doesnʻt have it, though they do have some 20 titles in the Very Short Introductions series.

Madpoet (11): I'm not sure about Muhammad - he dictated to a secretary, so even if he was ummi, illiterate, he still had his prophecies written down himself, if not actually collected in book form.

You could add Epictetus, however, whose stoic teachings were later written down by Arrian, in conscious emulation of Plato and Xenophon on Socrates.

>19 shikari: Well, I guess I'm wrong about Muhammad. But there seems to be a trend among other great thinkers that they often don't write themselves, but leave that to their disciples. Although, considering how many ancient texts have been lost, its possible they DID write something, but the books have not survived. (But then again, wouldn't their disciples have taken care to preserve their teacher's writings?)

Interestingly, the one recorded instance of Jesus writing (in the Book of Mark) is when he stooped down to write something in the dirt, on the ground. I've always wondered what he wrote, and in what language (Hebrew? Aramaic? Greek?)

>20 madpoet:

Probably Aramaic. There's a long discussion in Meier's A Marginal Jew.

"If we really believed a word we said, then — like Socrates, Jesus, Buddha — we would just think aloud. But as small artists, we're morbidly concerned with the dissemination and preservation of the text — from bribing our reviewers and securing our book-club deals, right down to fretting over the stitching and the acidity of the paper. The real prophets always know their words will be carried for them, carved into tablets as they hit the air." — Don Paterson, The book of shadows, p. 89.

Hey, we don't even know for sure if Socrates could write. No offense, but litteracy probably wasn't that widespread in his days.

This is a topic fundamental to understanding Greek thought. But since we are a staunch Book Animist society in both secular and religious disposition I would say it's a difficult topic to write about. Our writing animistic tendencies would be hilarious except the come with some extreme dangers to say the least. It tends to cause people over time to talk at each other rather than to each other. As the reading individual becomes more conceptually isolated from themselves and the world around them. Pretty soon, expert-ism becomes the priest's of Writing/reading animists. LOL, too funny actually, if it wasn't so profoundly dangerous and psychologically unbalanced. One could say This is a very broad psychological/sociological problem that is not easily eliminated or even understood.

"literacy probably wasnʻt that widespread (in Classical Greece)" (23)

True, Matt.
Historians have estimated that the literate were a large minority in Athens, but a minority. And some slaves were literate, some free Athenians not. In other states the literate were a much smaller minority.

There's that pleasant little tale in Plutarch about Thermistocles spelling his name so that an illiterate fellow-citizen could ostricize him, isn't there. Still, compared with some periods in history, late fifth-century democratic Athens (some years after Thermistocles, I suppose) does seem to have been a significantly literate place.

Wasn't that tale about his opponent Aristides?

Though I love him, I don't know half as much about Sox as I would like to so I'm not pretending to be any expert here but I've always understood that he just preferred dialogue. I imagine writing books would have seemed too much like putting forward his own views without having another opinion to debate them and he was all about discussion. Do we know he actually refused to write any books or could it be that he just didn't write any - there's a difference.

For everyone else interested in the guy, I'm sure you'd all like to know that The Hemlock Cup by Bettany Hughes is due out in p/b here any day now. I'm looking forward to it.

It has been a long time since I read anything that claimed to be a Socrates biography, and a long time since I read the early Platonic dialogues, which some scholars think, or once thought, were "more authentically Socratic." But I don't recall it being reported that Socrates "refused to write any books." Could someone help with a reference where he "refused" to write books, as opposed to simply not writing any books?

In any case, if we are talking about Socrates, rather than the "socratic method," Socrates himself did repeatedly contend that he was totally ignorant of Truth. As I recall, he characterized himself as something like "the most ignorant of men." Ignorant, of course, does not mean unwise, since the wise man knows that he knows not.

". . .a reference where he ʻrefusedʻ to write books, as opposed to simply not writing any books?" 29

Right, I would be interested in such a reference; it is just about what I asked some months ago
in #16. The prompt answer I was given (17) is not
an ancient source, of course, but Iʻm still intending to
look up what is said about the Socrates of the "Very Short Introduction" Series. (See #18).

30

I think I have that book some place. I'll try to find it and report back.

"find (Socrates, a very short. . .) and report back"

Thanks, lawecom.

I have found it. (The Very Short Introduction series is one that I have mostly in one place.) Will report back in the next 1-3 days.

I wish I had the V S Intro for Socrates. I have several of them and they are very helpful for giving an overview.

I don't know whether this is of interest, but Cambridge University Press has just released a new Cambridge Companion to Socrates by Donald R. Morrison. The opening essay by Louis-Andre Dorion is a useful overview of the 'Socratic problem', the search for a reliably historical Socrates (though he opens by saying that the 'desperately unsolvable nature of this question does not seem to guarantee it much of a future'). I've not read beyond the introductory chapter yet, but here's a link to the recent Bryn Mawr review by David M. Johnson: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011-07-13.html

For a good UK sourcebook on Socrates, the ancient sources are gathered together in translation in John Ferguson's Socrates: A Source Book published for the Open University back in 1970. It should be easy to find a cheap copy on-line. While not pretty by today's production standards, it does have about everything in it.

>27 andejons: andejons: 'Wasn't that tale about his opponent Aristides?'

Thanks, you're quite right: it was about Aristides, who asking the man ('one of the illiterate and completely rustic/boorish types') why he wanted to ostracize 'Aristides' - the man hadn't recognised who he was talking to - heard that he was simply 'tired of hearing him being called "the Just" everywhere'...

I have been rather busy of late, so I am still only about 2/3rds of the way through the Very Short Introduction to Socrates. I am yet to find anything, however, that suggests that Socrates "refused to write any books" or that such a topic ever occurred to him. There have been the usual comments about Socrates denying that he had any special knowledge to teach, other than the special knowledge that he had no special knowledge. But that doesn't appear to be quite the same as the claim that he declared that he would write no books - even if one takes what was written in those days as "books."

There is also, incidentally, a repeated theme in this Very Short Introduction that we have little knowledge about what Socrates actually said or did, the "historical Socrates" problem mentioned immediately above. It seems that the historical sources are very thin, reducing mostly to Plato and Xenophon, with at least some of Xenophon being derivative from Plato. Plato himself claimed not to be a first hand witness to much of what he might seem to be reporting. There is as well a contemporary theatrical satire which is thought not to be very reliable and a few comments by later philosophers such as Aristotle. But the total body of sources is very small and does not give one much confidence in anything beyond the probable historical existence of someone called Socrates who was some type of gadfly of his age.

I think you have hit the nail on the head; we know little about the man.

I have a vague recollection, which serves me but is probably too vague to serve anybody else (nevertheless I'm reporting it), that one of his chroniclers asserted that Socrates didn't like books in that they made thinkers less conversant with the things they were thinking. This memory is so vague that the characterization may have been made about another thinker of about his time, but I have it as Socrates.

I would expect that to be in a fatter book than a Very Short Introduction.

Robert

I suspect, but do not know, that what you're thinking of is some academic's implication from what I mentioned above. Apparently, at least from the picture we have of Socrates in the existing thin authorities, Socrates did not like those who claimed to be experts.

If you think of his reaction to what the Oracle of Delphi purportedly said about him, you will understand why not. He did not believe he was wise. Hence, he went to those who had a reputation for being wise in various fields and questioned them about their wisdom - only to find out that they were perhaps less wise than he was.

Only those who think that they are wise about a topic write a book on that topic. According to the reasoning above, there should be no books, and Socrates certainly wouldn't write one himself.

That is an interesting line of reasoning. However, it does not support the original claim in this thread, since there is apparently no evidence that Socrates ever followed out his thought to condemn books or writing books.

Having read more of the CC to Socrates, I have to say that I'm impressed. The second chapter, the Students of Socrates, goes through the additional works and Socratic dialogues written by the students of Socrates other than Plato and Xenophon, reconstructing those very few fragmentary dialogues which can be reconstructed. The chapters on Aristophanes and Xenophon are most interesting (I have to confess that of all Xenophon's Socratic output I've read only excerpts from the Oeconomicus). But the following excerpt in a section discussing Socrates' eroticism does have some bearing on out discussion as to whether Socrates was literate or not:

There is a striking aspect of Euthydemus that has no parallel in Plato: he is an avid reader {O'Connor's italics}, who prides himself on his library. This means Euthydemus is precisely the sort of man that Socrates tells Antiphon he most seeks in his friendships ( Mem . I.6.14). (The contrast with Plato is made particularly pointed because in this passage, Xenophon virtually quotes Plato, Lysis 211d-e about Socrates’ eagerness for friends. By this means, Xenophon indicates that he is rewriting Plato with a different emphasis.) Socrates himself is an avid reader, who says he has no greater pleasure than to fi nd the treasures of the wise men of the past in common reading with his friends. Indeed, such common reading is portrayed in this passage as Socrates’ exemplary activity with his friends, and the high point of his erotic life . When Socrates had rubbed naked shoulders with Critobolous, they too had been reading a book together (Xenophon, Symp . 27). One did not need Dante’s Paolo and Francesca or the young man reading over the other’s shoulder in Raphael’s “School of Athens” for portrayals of the erotics of books.

Source: David K. O’Connor, 'Xenophon and the Enviable Life of Socrates' in The Cambridge Companion to Socrates (Cambridge: CUP 2011) pp. 68-69..

Here's E. C. Marchant's Loeb translation of the passage referred to above within Xenophon's Memorabilia 1.4.14. Socrates is speaking at this point: "And the treasures that the wise men of old have left us in their writings I open and explore with my friends. If we come on any good thing, we extract it, and we set much store on being useful to one another."

The way I've always understood it is that he was more interested in the dialectic and that once a word was written down, you could no longer have a dialogue with it (pace Bakhtin). As we've seen in Plato, he did a lot of the "Socratic method" of question and response, and once you write it down that doesn't take into account a different response that might be given.

I just acquired (thrift shop) a bargain book : a translation of the Laws of Plato, translated by Trevor Saunders (Penguin Classics, 1970). I donʻt have any original to compare it with, but he seems to be a good translator.
The Laws is the only major NON-Socratic book by Plato.

The idea that we can speak with such certainty about almost anything in ancient Athens is overreaching quite a bit.

Whether or not there was a Socrates, the character created by Plato and Xenophon is all that's survived. We have no idea to what extent, if any, the "real" Socrates mirrored the literary character.

We have no idea to what extent, if any

As with most ancient-historical issues, "we have no idea" is overstating it. We have evidence on the topic. The evidence is copious and can plausibly reconstruct much of the facts. We will never know for sure and much will have to remain somewhere between "certain" and "very sketchy." But we don't know nothing. We know a lot.

We do know:

1) Socrates was a real historical personage who influenced a lot of people in Classical Athens, for better or worse
2) Plato and Xenophon have a character Socrates that is probably based upon the real Socrates but this character has heroic larger-than-life proportions
3) There have been credible suggestions that the account of Jesus' final days leading up to his execution were based upon elements of Socrates' willful subsmission to his execution, as depicted by Plato in the three dialogues
4) Socrates seems to have been a highly moral person, but he associated with others who were not so much, especially certain members of "The Thirty" -- a somewhat brutal oligarchy who came to power after the Athenian loss to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. It was this association -- not the alleged corruption of the young or denial of the gods -- that more than likely led to his trial and execution.
5) Socrates continues to fascinate today. I recently got the new Bettany Hughes book The Hemlock Cup, which of course focuses upon our subject.

"Plato and Xenophon have a character Socrates that is probably based upon the real Socrates, but this character has heroic larger-than-life proportions." Garp83 (in 45)

The above is the best short summary on the question of
the "reality" of Socrates that I have seen. Iʻm inclined to think
that Xenophon was more concerned with he "real" Socrates than Plato was. But Plato was mre concerned with writing "in depth"
on the character that he forwarded, take that character to be as "real" or "mythical" as you will.

Socratesʻs affinities with the notorious "Thirty Tyrants", sort of "Vichy" Athenians who were imposed on Athens by Spartaʻs
victory in the Peloponnesian War is brushed aside by most classicists, as explainable by the smallness of Athenian society -- one in which "everybody knew everybody else". Alban Dewes Winspear is exceptional, in that he regards this connection as
very significant. What Winspear brushes aside is the fact that
SOcrates served on the ATHENIAN side in the early part of
the Peloponnesian War -- depic ting this serv ice as on ly
all the more "proof" that S. was one of the pro-Spartan-leaning Elite
(he otherwise wouldnʻt have been able to afford equipping himself as the hoplites of that time were required to!)

Roland -- great stuff! And thanks for your kind wods regarding my comments. Although I don't buy that Socrates was pro-Spartan any more than he was pro-Athenian in the war. I think he enjoyed poking fun at convention, probably saw the war in the same light as Aristophanes, but his first loyalty seems to have been to his own sense of justice, which is why he refused -- and survived the refusal -- to act as arresting officer in a political round-up and earlier to vote against condemning the Admirals in the latter part of the war. He seemed to have a lot of issues with the messy Athenian democracy (which after all lacked all checks and balances) but I don't see anything to indicate he bore any more than a grudging admiration for Spartan courage and military prowess, as did many of the elite in the Classical Period in the various poleis. The way he lived his life (see Xenophon and Plato for symposium tales) he would not have fared well as a true Lacedaemonian

Perhaps worth checking out?

Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson

http://www.amazon.com/Socrates-Man-Times-Paul-Johnson/dp/0670023035/ref=sr_1_1?i...

The problem with Paul Johnson is that he is an extreme right-winger whose political ideology infuses all of his writing. Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties was appalling -- his admiration of Mussolini was nauseating. This is not a case like Donald Kagan or Jay Winik who bring a right-wing bias to the narrative without distorting the narrative itself, but an individual who has a current perspective to sell that he infects the past with. After Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties I swore I would never read anything by him again . . .

Charlie Chaplin?

OMG the touchstone is wtf off!! Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties would be the correct one ... HAHA

Yeah, I figured ;)

Never read the guy though. Obviously. Chaplin or Johnson.

~50

As someone who use to be known as an "extreme rightwinger" (but who is now an "extreme leftwinger" due to changes in the political spectrum) I can attest that there is much more wrong with Paul Johnson than his ideology. The worse thing about him is the broad brush with which he treats every subject. Believe it or not, he has written in one volume each, A History of Christianity, A History of the Jews. A History of the American People, etc. I don't know how he purports to make the opposite error by devoting an entire book to a person about whom we know very little, but I would guess he'll just make it up and then assert to any critic that he is right and they are wrong.

Johnson has no training as a historian or biographer or philosopher, his background is in art and journalism.

Well my issue -- left or right -- is the way your politics are injected into history. Don Kagan wants ancient Athens and Sparta to line up with the US vs USSR in his histories written during the Cold War, but it is clear where his historical narrative departs from his ideological underpinnings. Paul Johnson violates that line and that really pisses me off. Moreover, we are all entitled to our opinion, but if you admire fascist dictators you really lose me.

#54 laweco In the 80's I was considered by all who knew me to be a political moderate, just left-of-center. The right has dragged the spectrum so far to the right that I am now seen as a radical leftist. The fact that Obama -- who has been nothing short of a center-right Republican POTUS -- is pilloried as a left-wing socialist demonstrates just how distorted the picture has become.

~50

I've been around a bit longer than you have. I worked for Goldwater in '64 and still consider myself to be very much of his views. Those views, of course, included things like equal protection of all people under law (you know, little things like habeas corpus), the government keeping its nose out of the private lives of all individuals, the government keeping its nose out of religious matters, national defense where needed and where an enemy was clearly identified - not quasi-religious crusades against The Bad Guys, the supremacy of the Bill of Rights, etc. Obviously I'm a flaming leftist, although I don't really see what substantive changes have occurred in my views in the last fifty years.

Paul Johnson and his ilk are simply Tories. Not really that difficult to identify. They like a "moral" ruling class that will make use of a "strong government" to lead the peasants into "true virtue." Lies, mythology, the beating of war drums and other forms of deceit are simply a necessary part of the way one gets to "a virtuous society."

Disgusting. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, for all their differences, must be twirling in their graves when people like this involk their memories.

Lawecon, I really llike your second paragraph in message #56. Very neatly put. Starting out from Goldwater (when I was just a teenager), I'm now where I would be called not just "right wing" but also (oh, the horror) a "social issues conservative", but I agree with you here.

Years ago Johnson used to be something of a regular on British chat-shows. He was almost a caricature of a right-wing reactionary, regularly in demand when they wanted someone to put next to left-wing or 'permissive society' figures. I have fond memories of one discussion between him and the director Ken Russell. Johnson accused Russell of trying to intimidate him with his walking cane and Russell, having had some Freud spouted at him, accused Johnson of having obviously never read a word of Freud. It was all very heated and entertaining.

My point is that I've always suspected the whole Johnson persona of being an invention for financial and career purposes, in much the same way as the persona of an actor, pop star or comedian may be. I'd suspect anything he wrote of being written as much to fit the persona as from a genuine desire to research and pass on the info.

I disagree. Paul Johnson is a fine author who writes well-researched and well-documented books. I've benefitted from his work. Don't let your partisanship blind you to good reading.

"his admiration of Mussolini"

-- This is utter nonsense. I've read Modern Times cover to cover.

I disagree. Paul Johnson is a fine author who writes well-researched and well-documented books. I've benefitted from his work. Don't let your partisanship blind you to good reading.

===============================

We don't, that is why we don't like Johnson or Palin. After all, they have similar credentials regarding the subjects on which they write.

We are far from Socrates now.

Paul Johnson on Mussolini, from Modern Times:

Mussolini could not or would not conjure a new fascist civilization out of his cloudy verbal formulae. But what he liked doing and felt able to do, and indeed was gifted at doing, was big construction projects. He tackled malaria, then the great, debilitating scourge of central and southern Italy.

Hoover's corporatism — the notion that the state, business, and other Big Brothers should work together in gentle, but persistent and continuous manipulation to make life better — was the received wisdom of the day, among enlightened capitalists, left-wing Republicans and non-socialist intellectuals. Yankee-style corporatism was the American response to the new forms in Europe, especially Mussolini's fascism.

Here again we see the process of mutual corruption at work. Mussolini's putsch had been inspired by Lenin's. From his earliest days as a political activist, Hitler had cited Mussolini as a precedent.

I see little here to disagree with, except that "Yankee-style corporatism" predated Mussolini, and thus could not have been a "response to new forms in Europe."

I read Johnson's Intellectuals and found it entertaining. Wholly devoid of an understanding of historical context, but entertaining. His sin is mostly one of omission, it seems to me, though Rousseau, Marx and Chomsky do make easy targets.

Re Johnson: lots of journalists write on history, and anyone who writes history is biased. His bias just happens to be politically incorrect. And lots of American politicians were 'impressed' by Mussolini.

Ah yes .. well he did make the trains run on time. It is so cliche . . . and yet ... so perfectly captures the ambivalence of those who would prefer order even if that order strips away liberty.

"lots of American politicians were 'impressed' by Mussolini ..." and Lindbergh and Joe Kennedy were impressed by Hitler. So what?

The problem with Johnson is that his history is 9/10ths polemic and 1/10th history, which seems to me to be quite a cheat. I mean if you read Don Kagan, Victor Davis Hanson, Jay Winik -- its a long list -- you get plenty of right-wing nonsense written around the historical narrative, but the polemic does not actually replace the narrative.

Modern Times, to be gentle, is pure unadulturated crap. And I too read it cover to cover. IMHO

PS I know its a stretch, but Socrates would have easily sliced Johnson up and eaten him for breakfast, intellectually. I'm just sayin' . . .

Johnson in no way proffers support for the political agenda of Mussolini (despite the trains), or Franklin Roosevelt for that matter. His whole shtick is anti-statism. He is criticizing Mussolini (and Hitler, and Lenin) in Modern Times.

His whole shtick is anti-statism

=======================

ROTFL

'shtick' is Yiddish for gimmick

eta: see #58 above

(p.s. it is hard to convey sarcasm on the interwebs)

Garp83, don't forget that Paul Johnson is writing in a British context and that his political views (centre-right conservative of the generation born prewar) are probably more difficult to place outside that context. The same works the other way - I find many US authors appear to be extremists or naive where in fact their standpoint in the political debate on almost any subject is mainstream and simply determined by the different centre-position for that subject in the States compared with that in the UK. Politics just doesn't translate easily.

As he has grown older, however, I have personally become less and less tolerant of Johnson's increasingly opinionated writing, and can understand why others might accuse him of ignorance or extremism. Personally I have only read his essays: his books, I suspect, one needs to take each on its own merits. Only I can't imagine wanting to read any of them, not sharing his 'professional Catholicism'. I'm happy to be persuaded, if anyone has any specific recommendations, however.

63colukben: Did you actually read "Modern Times" or are you culling your conclusions from reviews? I read it and distinctly recall that he had a real grudging respect and admiration for Mussolini until the latter disappointed him by going down the more extreme end of the fascist road over time. He has little use for FDR but admires Coolidge, if I recall -- certainly no crime but whacky nonetheless. My point, engraved in stone I suppose, is that his book simply is not history, despite the hype, but a grand opinion piece that is loose on facts and tight on polemic. It is very well-written, but then so is "Lord of the Rings" . . .

Here is an excerpt from a review on Amazon that I wish (oh how I wish!) I had written but alas, I did not:

"This book is flagrant, biased right wing drivel at its worst. Paul Johnson admires dictators like Pinochet and Franco and criticizes JFK for ending the Cuban Missile Crisis without a war. He loves some of the worst of American presidents like Coolidge and Nixon. I read this book before in my late teens when under heavy conservative influence. Now, reading it with an open mind, I realize what a crock it is. I have five books by this blatantly pro-Catholic reactionary in my library, and I am giving them all away (or, if no one wants them, using them as kindling for my next fire). "

#59 - Not partisanship, deniro: 'personal antipathy' if you will, or, even, 'irrational personal prejudice', but not partisanship. There are people on the right I respect and people on the left who get right up my nose and, anyway, as the years pass I find myself getting more and more apolitical.

ETA - 'apolitical' - This appears to mean that I'm an 'old reactionary' or a 'bolshie' according to the direction from which someone is looking at me. Which should mean I'm in the middle - but that's where everyone thinks they are. Which all goes to show how political thinking is congenitally crippled by this artificial and troublesome metaphor of the single dimension, left to right. So I try to stand outside of it but no-one will believe me. And I get accused of partisanship.

Re #65

I guess I don't get your point. (In addition to always thinking of "shtick" as "routine" or "patter".)

But what I was laughing about was applying the term "antistatist" to Johnson. "Antistatists" are a particular type of extreme libertarian who actively hate the state, much like a type of anarchist. They think that the state is the source of most social evil. They oppose all "normal" functions of states - for instance, wars, conscription, taxes, subsidies, slavery, treating noncitizens as vermin, prohibitions on normal human activities, etc. You often see quoted by such sorts this passage from Proudhon's The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century:

" To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-statism

Now I have no doubt that Johnson is or pretends to be a Tory Conservative, but that has nothing to do with being vehemently against the state and what the state typically does. It is, in fact, a historically common form of statism, at least in the West. If you want to know more about it ask Deniro.

Postscript ... what I recall most enraged me about Modern Times was that Reaganesque neocon distinction between communist "totalitarians" and anti-communist "authoritarians" -- so it was okay to get tossed out of a plane by Pinochet's authoritarians, I suppose, rather than shot by a Maoist, for instance. Utterly absurd. (This is where the early sense of grudging admiration for Mussolini came in, because he was not a communist.)

perhaps this discussion of Johnson might shed some light on the topic after all.
The written word pins an author down to a set of positions which can be interpreted and misinterpreted by an audience out of reach. dialectic on the other hand, allows someone much more freedom to change, abandon or refine a position, and allows the 'author' to challenge the audience directly.
what's that saying? the best defence is a good offence?

“enraged”? “nauseous”? Garp, it’s just a book.

lawecon,
Of course Johnson is no anarchist. He is “anti-statist” in the same way that Margaret Thatcher is “anti-statist.” What Johnson makes clear in Intellectuals is his disdain for what he regards as utopian schemes that rely upon state power to refashion society in the name of ‘progress.’* It is clear from what I have read by him that he is as suspicious of the aims of Fascism as he is of Socialism.

*As you well know, this line of argument has been around since the Enlightenment. And, yes, one tends to oppose state power when it is deployed for a purpose with which one disagrees. Right-wing moralists like Johnson fail to see that the use of public authority to defend ‘tradition’ or guide ‘proper behavior’ (in his case, behavior in line with catholic Natural Law) is just as coercive as the command economy of socialists.

Thanks, binders, for reminding us that Socrates is still relevant, even if he was an apologist for tyranny…I mean, a courageous man of principle…no, wait, a man of his time…no, a man of our time..a figment of Plato’s imagination…the smartest man who ever lived…a victim of the leveling mediocrity of democracy…an arrogant elite…

He is “anti-statist” in the same way that Margaret Thatcher is “anti-statist.”
=========================

Yes, I well recall Margaret Thatcher's lecture when she visited Phoenix. The Lecture was on the topic of The 7 Principles of Freedom. Principle No. 3 was "a strong public school system." (I can't help you out with Principles 4-7, as my wife and I walked out at that point.)

I think that this well illustrates what you must mean by "anti-statist". If not, try this excerpt from her Wilkipedia biography "Thatcher once told Friedrich Hayek: "I know you want me to become a Whig; no, I am a Tory". Hayek believed "she has felt this very clearly".6"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcherism

Again, I must respectfully point out that the regime of Orwell's Big Brother wasn't correct when it intoned: "War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength" Neither are Johnson or Thatcher "anti-statists".

#73 - Principle No. 3 was "a strong public school system."

I'll remind friends in the US that, in the UK, a 'public school' is a private school (as opposed to a 'state school').

72 colukben I get the sense that you never read Modern Times but have read his other writings, so your comments are a bit off center. Also, you of all people should know there is no such thing as just a book.

Morever, with respect, I think you are misusing the term "anti-statist" to mean something no one else thinks it means. I suppose we could ask "uncle statist" and see what he says ...

#74

Yes, thank you, I am aware of that. Thatcher was quite clear that she meant government run schools. Perhaps she was speaking American for the poor illiterate Yanks.

I know we would all like consistency and uniformity in terminology, but none exists. Political terms, especially, tend to be defined situationally. I put quotation marks around “anti-statist” because that is the position Johnson stakes out for himself throughout his book Intellectuals. If this displeases anyone, take it up with him, or Wikipedia. In that book Johnson is clearly critical of Mussolini and other state-directed projects/ideas (see the chapters on Rousseau or Marx, for instance).

One can easily run Modern Times through Google Books and search for “Mussolini.” Of the two dozen or so references that turned up, none could be construed as praising Mussolini.

#76 - Now I'm confused. I'd assumed she'd advocated a strong private school system and you'd walked out in protest.

77 colukben Read the book, dude ... then get back to me. It may only be a book, but if you don't actually even read it ... well, you get my drift ..

No matter how you define anti-statism, I can't grok how a guy like Paul Johnson who generally admires right-wing dictators and Presidents like Nixon who set themselves above the Constitution can possibly be anti-statist. Perhaps it is Johnson who is misusing the term, which simply underscores the position of many of his critics that he is simply full of shit.

And again, our man Socrates would have interloculated Johnson into a frothy-mouthed corner in about an hour.

Look, "dude" (I don't know how old you are) I have read the book Modern Times (among others of his) and there is no basis for your criticism of Johnson as a lover of "right-wing dictators" or your depiction of Johnson as an "extreme right-winger." Moreover, should I take seriously a man who uses the word "grok"?—in a thread which is supposed to be about Socrates? Your words indicate that you are not a very serious reader or thinker. Stop hijacking the thread. Go back to reading Howard Zinn.

What's more, not only am I going to read the book by Johnson about Socrates, I requested my public library order it, and my requests go through 99% of the time. So now the virus of Johnson will spread…oh no…

Deniro -- chill out. It is a conversation and it was not even directed at you. Hardly a hijacking, as well. What I've always enjoyed about LT is the conversation. You don't have to agree . . .

I've never read Howard Zinn. And what exactly do you have against Heinlein?

~78

Look back over this discussion and see if you can figure it out.

~77
I put quotation marks around “anti-statist” because that is the position Johnson stakes out for himself throughout his book Intellectuals.

=======================================

Actually, I just ran Intellectuals through Goggle Books and Amazon. The excerpts are, of course, limited, but can't seem to find the term "anti-statist". Perhaps you could point out where I'm missing it http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Marx-Tolstoy-Sartre-Chomsky/dp/0061253170#re...

#82 - Don't think I'll bother - only came here for Socrates, anyway - bowing out.

Yeah when I saw this thing was getting dozens of posts per day, I'd assumed the worst. Looks like I was right.

So back to Socrates: I would love to know what Socrates' final judgement was of Alcibiades. There are wonderful hints of his being enamored of Alcibiades like many of the smart symposium set -- the kind of romantic attraction that painter and Lord Henry had for Dorian Grey, I suppose -- but I wonder if later, after the fall, Socrates still remembered the rascal fondly or with a bad taste.

Socrates explains his dislike of writing in the Phaedrus - unlike spoken dialogue, the written word gives but unvarying answer; and, reliance on the written word will cause our memories to atrophy.

#87 reliance on the written word will cause our memories to atrophy

Or perhaps free up that memory space for other things? Sadly, for many people, those 'other things' turn out to be who won last year's Big Brother or what Britney is up to these days but that's their choice, I guess. Provided we still have access to the written word (and I shudder to think what the world will be like if we become so reliant on computers that we fail to record anything in hard copy - and then all the technology goes down) there surely can be no harm in storing our memories on 'hard copy' and gaining that extra shelf space?

(Sorry, nothing to do with Socs. As you were.)

Given that Plato wrote about Alcibiades, and not completely unkindly, we can get some clues from that.

Not a big mystery. He apparently felt that open, verbal, live debate (of the kind he practiced with his students) was the best way for men to understand complex and difficult questions; and the best way to clarify ideas and concepts.

Socrates "final" judgment of Alkibiades ... final as when he was drinking the cup of hemlock? Hard ... to say. We can't even agree on what Plato said about them, as is evidenced at "Ancient History: Benjamin Jowett's Plato."

Maybe Socrates was lazy and concealed it with indignity? I just bought a 180 page notebook for $1.49 at the local wally-store. In those days if you wanted to write something you had slaughter sheep, mix dye, and pluck a goose. By then you forgot what you had to say! If you lived in Egypt the sheep might be spared for papyrus.

92 > Well, I think by Socrates's time they had specialized sheep slaughterers, ink makers, and goose pluckers. But it surely added up to more than $1.49!

Actually, "parchment" - though strictly the name didn't apply in his time yet - could also be calf or goat. But never mind, we get your drift. As a matter of commodity history I do wonder though: did Athenians at that time use papyrus or parchment for writing material? Herodotus seems to imply the latter.

Parchment has the virtue of being reusable, so although it might seem luxurious to us, it was possibly more practical than imported papyrus that could only be used once.

(For the uninitiated, the fact that parchment could be scraped and reused is the reason for the requirement sometimes seen in magical instructions that a spell should be inscribed on "virgin" parchment. Because it's more precious and harder to find, acquiring it and using it--only one time! what a waste!--adds to the occult oomph.)