27 January 2004 ~ Lying about postmodernism, or, eat your baklava and shut up...

I know, I know, I haven't been updating my journal, and I suck... It was very pleasantly pointed out to me today that it's almost Wet Cleanup's fifth birthday, and here I am, just neglecting the hell out of my dear little website... Blah.

Anyway, I don't much like making excuses, so rather than whining that I've had too much work to do, blah, blah, etc., I'm posting my latest work of absolute genius [insert guffaws here...]. First, a bit of background...

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When I went to register for winter-quarter classes, I forgot what day I was supposed to register, and ended up logging on to Evergreen's registration website a day late. So, I couldn't get into any of the classes I wanted. Well, happily, I knew a bunch of people who were putting together an independent contract. An independent contract is a "class" that a student designs himself. He gets to pick his own books and design his own course of study and all that, but the catch is, he has to find a professor who's willing to sponsor his contract. In other words, if you want to study how many fat Philly Blunts you have to smoke before you collapse, you may have a hard time acquiring a sponsor. A group contract, which is what my friends were putting together, is the same thing, except there's more than one person doing pretty much the same thing.

Now, these kids are friends of mine -- the smart people from the program I took during fall a year ago. It really was a very cool class, and these people were the pick of the litter; the kids who always asked the right questions, and gave answers far beyond what you might find on the back of a cereal box. Real intellectual colleagues, I guess I'd say. But more than that: friends. There's something really special about hanging out with people who simultaneously make you dumber ("uh... what the fuck are you talking about? What the hell is 'non-normative eudaimonism?'"), and smarter ("Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh yeah! Non-normative eudaimonism!"). I love them. I was very willing to sign up for their group contract, regardless of what it was, just because they're such cool people, and I knew I'd be learning a lot.

"So, uh... yeah, guys, what is it you're studying? I mean, what's the contract about?"

Ancient Greek philosophy."

"Like, Plato and Aristotle, and all that?"

"Yeah."

"I always have a hell of a time keeping all those Greek dudes separate in my head. They all sound the same, really. It's all Greek to me. Huh huh huh..."

"Right, so, Helen, do you wanna be in our group?"

"Sure!"

Duh. So, then they pull out this syllabus they've already made up, and a book list, and then five packets of photocopied essays they're going to read in the first week... I page through the syllabus -- which has, like, six pages, and is fucking ANNOTATED... As in, the SYLLABUS HAS FOOTNOTES -- and the book list -- which has "The Collected Works of Plato" AND "The Collected Works of Aristotle," each of which exceed in length the fucking DICTIONARY... And STILL, for whatever dumbassed reason -- STILL, I decide to sign up with them for this contract.

I signed up for a class that has footnotes on the syllabus. Not just footnotes, but an entire page dedicated to footnotes.

Not only that, but then I decided, well, SURE I can handle taking another class on top of this...

Yeah.

The Plato book is 1,700 pages long. The Aristotle book is 1,500 pages long. Both of them are in my backpack, and have nothing to do with the ten other books I bought and the relentless essays that keep showing up in my mailbox with notes like, "We're reading this to supplement the Murdoch readings during Week 2." Do the math.

And anyway, haven't I been told, on more than one occasion, by more than one person, that girls can't do philosophy?

[We don't think "abstractly" or "strategically," you see... We're much better off learning to bake pies to please our men, who should be off at war, at least when they're not philosophizing over beers... And yeah, I've heard it... And yeah, more than once...]

Well, it's too damned late now. Here I am, taking this program. I can't possibly live up to the expectations of it. I mean, ALL of ancient Greek philosophy in ten fucken weeks? But, I'm stuck, so I'm just going to read as much as humanly possible, and I'm going to write as much as humanly possible, and then I'm going to go home and fall asleep and ignore Wet Cleanup.

So, that's the class... Now, let's talk about the paper...

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So, each of us is supposed to write a bunch of papers every week. First, we have to write a two-page paper every week about what we've read. Then, we have to write three "big" papers about something we've been thinking about in all of the reading. So, I've been okay with the two-page papers, but the big one freaked me out. I don't write big papers easily. I make a big old stink about how I don't want to write one, and I don't so much as make an outline until two days before it's due... Plus, I haven't actually written a "big paper" in about a year, give or take...

I made every excuse not to write this paper. I had to go to the grocery store. I had to go to the optometrist. I had to update Wet Cleanup before all my readers dumped me. I had to pet the dog. The dog will die if she doesn't get petted at LEAST once every six minutes. I had to watch TV. Yeah, I actually told myself that I couldn't write my paper because I had to watch TV.

Seriously, maybe girls shouldn't try to be philosophers. Or at least *I* shouldn't. Certainly, my rationality is severely lacking...

Well, I wrote the paper. It was so damned lousy. I made Jake read the first page, and he said, "so, you're saying there's no soul?" Well, no, I wasn't saying any such thing, but apparently my paper was. I qualified my argument. I wrote a few more pages. It was crappy. I abandonned it. One day left before the turn-in date, and I still haven't gotten to my damned point.

I got to my point on Sunday afternoon. But I really didn't want to write the paper anymore, so the point isn't really very clear.

Actually, it's really lousy.

I'm a writing tutor, you see. And if a student EVER came to me with a paper like this, I would tell them to maybe go into pie-baking and forget all this philosophy crap. I would also tell him not to pull absolute bullshit out of his ass and pretend it's true. I would also advise him against ever, ever using the word "postmodernism." I don't have any idea what postmodernism is, mostly because I've asked everybody I know (at least everybody who might KNOW), what postmodernism is, and I've gotten exactly as many answers.

Fuck this shit.

So, yesterday, I shamefully brought my paper in to my classmates for their scrutiny.

Their papers were about: 1.) metaphysics as an avenue to virtue ethics; 2.) the virtue of trying for virtue; 3.) the incommensurability of non-normative eudiamonism. Or something like that. I really did get lost in the vocabulary of that last one. And yes, it did include the terms "incommensurability" and "non-normative eudaimonism." Seriously.

MY paper is about why it's inconsistent for a person not to eat a big old plateful of baklava if one does not believe in a soul.

Yeah, really.

I mean, it's about some other stuff too, but that's most of it. And while I was writing it, I made up about 50% of my supporting evidence. I put words into the mouth of fucking SOCRATES. I made up a definition of postmodernism. I invented inconsistencies that really weren't in any of the books I read. And then, for some reason, I had to go and bring Jesus into it all.

I think it's got to be some kind of unforgivable sin to put words into the mouth of Socrates. Well, maybe not. Plato did it, and got away with it. But I'm not Plato.

So, we went through everybody's papers...

...and each of my classmates ran up against brick walls in their logic, and had to be asked, "well, if non-normative eudaimonism is a good thing, then how can one ascend to the Platonic virtue of universality without getting muddled up with the relative sophrosyne of...?" Yeah. You see what I mean. Or rather, you don't see what I mean, which is exactly the point.

But nobody found anything to argue about in my paper. They didn't even flinch when I made up crap and stuffed it into Socrates' mouth. Apparently, somehow, I GUESSED what Socrates would have said. Apparently, he DID say it; I just haven't read those parts yet. Weird.

Nobody took issue with the postmodernism thing, either. As a matter of fact, nobody took issue with ANY of it. They said, "this is a good, solid, tight paper."

I think they just didn't argue with it doesn't actually say anything. That's got to be it. I mean it; you cannot understand how bad this paper is... Well, you will in a minute, because I'll be posting it here...

Now, don't get me wrong. It's not that it SOUNDS bad. It uses words like "cultivation" and "elucidate," and... well, shit, my last paper actually had actual Latin words in it... as in, other than "et cetera." My sentences are long and graceful and somewhat pretentious. Okay, very pretentious. Because, while they're real pretty and smart-sounding and all, they're probably not actually SAYING much. I don't actually elucidate anything. At least nothing that Socrates hasn't already elucidated. Oh, except for the stuff I made up, which Socrates DID actually elucidate, even though I didn't read that part....

Right...

Anyway, this is why I haven't been able to post entries in Wet Cleanup lately...

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MY PAPER...

Ancient Greek Philosophy
January 24, 2004
Week 4 Paper

In this paper, I will be exploring the Socratic perception of the relationship between the body and the soul. This is an especially important relationship because several of the deductions of Socrates¡¦ arguments, particularly in the Phaedo, are reliant upon the premises that the soul is separate from, and superior to, the body. After a long discussion in Phaedo, Socrates concludes that it is better to let the body suffer than the soul, setting a precedent for martyrdom, which has shaped modern religious doctrine and cultural behavior.

Body Versus Soul

It is not universally accepted in modern times that the body and the soul are separate entities. Indeed, much of contemporary psychiatric medicine is based on the assumption that the brain ¡V the tangible brain, a vital organ of the human body ¡V is the soul. As Gregory Vlastos notes in his essay ¡§Socrates contra Socrates in Plato,¡¨ Socrates tends to identify ¡§soul¡¨ with the self. ¡§For ¡¥I believe¡¦ he says ¡¥my soul believes¡¦ (Gorgias 486E). When he says that someone¡¦s soul is wicked we know¡Khe means: that person is wicked¡¨ (Vlastos, 55). Where does the ¡§self,¡¨ the ¡§I¡¨ reside? Psychiatrists, doling out such chemicals as Selective Serotinin Reuptake Inhibitors ¡V which act upon the brain to change an individual¡¦s behavior, affect, emotions, or even intellectual functioning ¡V imply by their very occupations that they believe the self to be an intrinsic, material part of the body, specifically located in the brain. Existentialism and postmodernism have promoted a common cultural belief that, in fact, there is no such thing as ¡§soul,¡¨ and modern medical research backs this up. That is, what antiquity refered to as ¡§soul,¡¨ was simply an electrochemical reaction achieved by the firing of electrical impulses between neurons in the brain. Medicine and psychiatry have joined together to create a model of the so-called ¡§soul,¡¨ which explains away differences in individuals¡¦ behavior through theories of ¡§nature [genetics] and nurture.¡¨ Thus far, this model has been useful in understanding certain anatomical, neurological, and chemical functions as they relate to behavior, but overall, it presents a pessimistic view of the human soul. This view is, in short: there is no soul separate from the structures of the physical body.

According to Plato¡¦s Phaedo, nothing could be further from the truth. In this dialogue, Socrates explicitly states that the body and soul are separate entities. He asks Simmias:

Then it is your opinion in general that a man of this kind is not concerned with the body, but keeps his attention directed as much as he can away from it and toward the soul? (Phaedo, 64E)

Socrates identifies the soul not only with the self, but also with wisdom and the acquisition of knowledge. According to Vlastos, in the ¡§physiological and medical sciences of the day¡Ksense-experience was firmly esconced as the primary source of the data for knowledge¡¨ (Vlastos, 68). Not so for Socrates. Socrates, as the vehicle for Plato¡¦s epistemological queries, believed that the senses were, as physical experiences of the body, untrustworthy messengers of knowledge. Vlastos gives a clear overview of this belief:

[Socrates] goes far beyond this to reject the senses as an avenue to knowledge about anything whatever, maintaining that nothing worthy of the name of ¡§knowledge¡¨ can be reached by their means and that our only hope of acquiring any knowledge at all is via the purely intellectual activity to which he refers as ¡§reasoning¡¨ or ¡§thinking¡¨ (Vlastos, 67).

To Socrates ¡V or at least to the Platonic view of Socrates ¡V it was absurd to consider the senses as a channel for knowledge. Knowledge, of course, is abstract and invisible. Therefore, according to Socrates¡¦ logic, how could an invisible entity, or Form, manifest itself accurately in the senses? And how could a person store intangible information within a tangible body?

Then when is it that soul attains to truth? When it tries to investigate anything with the help of the body, it is obviously led astray (Phaedo, 65B).

The only real method of learning, or attaining knowledge, is, as Vlastos states, by way of ¡§reasoning¡¨ ¡V use of one¡¦s intangible soul. Not only was the soul differentiated from the body, it was far superior to the body.

The Superior Soul

The specific reason for the superiority of the soul over the body has already been elucidated: the soul was the only suitable vehicle for knowledge. To both Socrates and Plato, the basis for moral philosophy is knowledge, and, as both viewed moral philosophy as the highest form of art in which mankind could participate, it is obvious that knowledge, and therefore the soul, would be of absolute importance.

It is also well worth noting, however, the extent to which the body and the physical structures and experiences associated with it, came to be despised. Vlastos elaborates on this:

[Socrates] is¡Kconvinced that both intellectually and morally we would be incomparably better off if we had been spared incarnation, and that now, stuck inside an animal, our fondest hope should be to break away, to fly off, never to return (Vlastos, 56).

This seems like a rather extreme contention on Vlastos¡¦s behalf, but there is no shortage of textual evidence to support it. In Phaedo, Socrates clearly encourages Simmias in his belief that a ¡§true philosopher¡¨ should ¡§despise¡¨ pleasures associated with the body, going so far as to refer to such pleasures as ¡§so-called pleasures,¡¨ some examples of which, he says, are ¡§food and drink,¡¨ ¡§sexual pleasures,¡¨ and ¡§smart clothes and shoes¡¨ (Phaedo, 64D). Furthermore, in Phaedrus, Socrates contrasts the purity of the soul with the corruption of the body, leaving no question as to Vlastos¡¦s accuracy in the above statement. For the sake of illuminating Socrates¡¦ deep hatred for the body, I am taking the liberty of italicizing certain words in the following.

[P]ure was the light that shone around us, and pure were we, without taint of that prison house which now we are encompassed withal, and call a body, fast bound therein as an oyster in its shell(Phaedrus, 250C).

The Virtue in Self-Sacrifice

Since the body and the mind are separate to Socrates, and since the soul is greater than the body, Socrates naturally reasons that the soul requires more concern from the individual than the body. Toward the beginning, of Phaedo, Socrates clearly shuns those activities -- the "so-called pleasures" -- he associates with the body. The life of the body is useless to him; he cares only for the cultivation of the soul. Even at the end of his life, he rejects material comforts. When Crito suggests a final meal and "company" of a loved one, Socrates courageously declines, preferring to die with the dignity he associates with denying bodily desires.

I believe that I should gain nothing by drinking the poison a little later -- I should only make myself ridiculous in my own eyes if I clung to life and hugged it when it has no more to offer (Phaedo, 116E-117A).

Having proved the immortality and imperishability of the soul, Socrates states his belief in the afterlife: one is guided by "his own guardian spirit" (Phaedo, 107D), to a place of judgment, after which the soul is declared pure or impure. Pure souls reincarnate, while impure souls are "shunned and avoided by all" (Phaedo, 108A-B) Thus, Socrates is greatly concerned with maintaining the goodness of the soul:

If the soul is immortal, it demands our care not only for that part of time which we call life, but for all time. And indeed it would seem now that it will be extremely dangerous to neglect it (Phaedo, 107C).

Socrates has proven his commitment to this ideal in the Apology, wherein he states that he would rather die than defend himself by means of actions he considers "unworthy," despite the fact that such actions are commonplace (Apology, 38E). In Gorgias, he tells Polus that he would rather suffer injustice than perform it (Gorgias, 46912-C2), but his absolute conviction with regard to the superiority of the soul and its purity is only proven through his death, or rather, through his refusal to live what he considers an impure life.

The specifics of Socrates' death, as reported by Plato, are significant for several reasons. First, Socrates' belief in an afterlife is largely based on the premise that the soul is separable from the body, and, as such, is immortal. From the point of view of, for example, a postmodernist, this would be thoroughly ridiculous. If the soul is viewed as an anatomical structure of the body, or as the result of physical occurrences within the body, and the body has been more or less proved to be mortal (although the Socrates-Plato duo might reject this claim due to its empirical nature), one has no other option than to reject Socrates' theory of the soul's immortality. Obviously, such a rejection would carry with it a number of fairly depressing implications, including something of a lack of meaning to one's actions, and a complete lack of meaning in one's thoughts. It would also inherently negate Socrates' reasons for preferring sacrifice of the body over diminishment of the soul.

Second, Socrates may have set a precedent, not only for sacrificing the body, but for relinquishing attachment to material goods. While modern people are perhaps much more aware of Jesus' teachings to this effect, it should be noted, at least, that Plato's dialogues may have put forth a very new concept. In Western culture, denial of bodily pleasures is generally viewed as virtuous. It is considered polite to limit one's portion of food, for example. Within a culture that often refers to the dead as "worm food," a culture in which "afterlife" is often denounced as utterly fantastic, it seems odd and somewhat anachronistic to reject food, sex, and other objects of physical enjoyment.

The concept of martyrdom may have been passed down to present culture via Christianity, specifically Jesus' crucifixion, and references throughout the New Testament to the sovereignty of the soul over the body, or perhaps through other sources. Perhaps Jesus was even influenced by Socrates' example. It is beyond the scope of this paper to speculate on the modes by which this concept became embedded in contemporary Western culture. It is, however, important to recognize Socrates as a great historical example of self-sacrifice, and also to recognize the vague but perceptible similarities between, for example, refusing dessert, and allowing oneself to be put to death for one's beliefs.

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You see? So, if you don't believe in such a thing as a soul, eat your damned baklava and shut up.

Or something.

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I assure you, this paper is not half as intelligent as it sounds. It's also full of stuff I pulled out of my butt. Don't be fooled. Really.

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I'm going to go read now...... Maybe someday, I will figure out what a postmodernist is....

~Helena*