[hist-analytic] Not Cricket

[Baynesr at comcast.net]

First a couple of trivial points. 



Honor among thieves is, among thieves, what the golden mountain 

is to mountain climbers. 



"Thrasymachus nowhere makes it clear whether 
he regards the POPULAR APPLICATION of the 
term 'just', which Thrasymachus may not himself 
endorse, as a positive or negative commendation." 
(p. 310) 



Whatever the popular application may have been, 

I see no philological reason for believing that it 

might have been a term of derision or of simple 

fact: "There is a just man, let's kill him." This doesn't 

seem as though it would make sensein any language. 

"There is an X man, let's kill him" can, to use fashionable 

language, "contextualized, but now whare 'X' is just. 

This, of course, has been subject to considerable 

discussion, "a priori evils." 



Now a quick reaction to the second point you make 

from Grice. 



"Among [Socrates'] flaws in this argument one 
might point particulArly to the dubious analogy 
between the province of justice and the province 
of the arts, and also to a blatant equivocation 
with the word 'compete', which might mean 
either 'try to perform better than' or 'try to get 
the better of'" (p. 313) 



I would have to look at the argument again very 

closely, which I can't right now; but I have one 

reflection. Suppose we say that justice requires 

a sovereign and he is the philosopher king. Now 

what in the analogy corresponds to the philosopher 

king in the art. I would say it would be something 

very much like a master craftsman, someone who 

can "play all the instruments" AND compose. If this 

were the correct correspondence then I think Plato's 

argument, if I am right about which one etc. you 

are talking about can be saved. A further general 

remark. 



Socrates was deeply moved by Parmenides. He 

took, I believe, the minimal step away from Parmenides 

that would preserve much of his, otherwise shattered 

world - and here I'm talking about the logical parts of the 

Sophist. Physical objects were no more real for either 

than Russell. His, Socrates's ethical arguments are 

sometimes an exercise in youthful nostalgia in relation 

to Parmenides. Hare, Grice, Austin moved away from 

this conceptual forlornedness. Moore retained it, as did 

Mill. Rawls is in all of this not at all close to people like 

Hare;there is no analysis. Instead we have an incredibly 

complex set of relations between terms used with new 

and not just "popular application." After a few hundred 

pages it becomes prose, no analysis. There is somethng 

similar in Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Grice, however, 

is an unyielding analyst. I'd hate to have that blood hound 

after me, that's for sure. 



By the way, we should both (and others) save space on 

the archives by only quoting the message to which we 

respond. I'm trying to adjust to this. 



Regards 



STeve 






--- On Thu, 1/14/10, jlsperanza at aol.com <jlsperanza at aol.com> wrote: 



From: jlsperanza at aol.com <jlsperanza at aol.com> 
Subject: Re: Not Cricket 
To: hist-analytic at simplelists.co.uk 
Date: Thursday, January 14, 2010, 1:55 PM 




Yes, toleration and tolerant are great concepts. I cannot but think of  
Locke when I hear those words. 

The Grice ref. in fact is to Plato, Republic. It should be online  
googlebooks for Studies in the Way of Words, and the rather pretentious title  goes: 

"Metaphysics, Eschatology, and Plato's Republic" 

and it's possibly Grice's last, since he wrote it in 1987 especially for  
the book. 

The "Republic" section concerns the dialogue between Socrates and  
Thrasymachus on 

  'fair'    -- say 

as being 

   'moral' 

or 

   'legal' or 'political' as Rawls would have it. 

Grice feels Socratic but finds it hard to 'go the rounds' with  
Thrasymachus, hence the need to apply what he calls philosophically  eschatological 
concepts. 

E.g. 

Grice writes: 

"Thrasymachus nowhere makes it clear whether 
he regards the POPULAR APPLICATION of the 
term 'just', which Thrasymachus may not himself 
endorse, as a positive or negative commendation." 

(p. 310). 

"Among [Socrates'] flaws in this argument one 
might point particulArly to the dubious analogy 
between the province of justice and the province 
of the arts, and also to a blatant equivocation 
with the word 'compete', which might mean 
either 'try to perform better than' or 'try to get 
the better of'" (p. 313) 

which look like anti-reciprocals, if you axes (sic) me. 

Grice goes on to discuss, 

  "honor among thieves" 

as important. 

Grice's classicist prose sometimes take the best of him. 

"If the possession of Gyges's ring would enable 
our inroads upon others to remain undiscovered, 
no reasonable person would deny himself this 
advantage. 
   Adeimantus reinfornces the demands expressed 
by Glaucon by drawing attention to the support lent 
by the prevailing education and culture to the 

    RECEIVED opinion 

about 

     justice 

as distinct from the view of it taken by Socrates" 

    (p. 314) 

"In the case of Plato's Thrasymachus it seems that he, 
perhaps like Plato himself, is njot disposed to engage 
in the kind of 

     conceptual sophistication 

practiced by Aristotle and by some philosophers since 
Aristotle; for Thrasymachus, the friends of MORAL JUSTICE 
(on the assumption that the representation of Thrasymachus 
as a kind of moral sceptic is legitmate) will be philosophers 
who treat the term 

    'moral justice' 

as one which refers to morality, or to moral virtue 
in general, a usage which Aristotle also recognises as 
legitimate , alongside the usage in which 'justice' 
is the name of one or more specific virtues" 
   (p. 316) 

"The possibly more Kantian conception of the 
relation between moral and political justice will 
perhaps carry the consequence that the view 
of Socrates and his friends that moral 
justice is desirable independently of the consequences 
of acting justly is no accident." 

   (p. 319) 

"My account also resembles the original account 
by Socrates in that it deploys the notion of 

    ANALOGY 

which was a prominent ingredient in Socrates's story." 
(p. 320). 

On analogy: 

"Consider 'in in good shape', which seemingly 
applies to objects belonging to different stages, 
namely to animal bodies and to states. In addition 
to such 'holistic' epithets, which apply to subject 
which inhabit different stages, there will also be 
'meristic' epithets, like 'part' itself, which apply to 
parts of such aforementioned subjects" 

(p. 323) 

"Gaps which appear in the ranks of 
first-mode specifications might be expected 
to favor neo-Socrates rather than 
neo-Thrasymachus, unless neo-Thrasymachus" 

--- Grice must be thinking Nozick. 

"can make out a good case in favour of the 
view that where first-mode specifications 
are lacking, second-mode specifications 
will also be lacking." (p. 323) 

"It might be possibly, by a move which would 
be akin to that of "Ramsification", to redescribe 
the things which inhabit a certain stage" 
(p. 324). 

Re: analogy. 

"It further suggests that neo-Socrates need 
both of these conceptions [of analogous terms], 
but, of course, cannot have both of them" 
(p. 332). 

"If we go beyond Plato, we might to add 
such forms of motivational appeal as that which 
arises from subscriptions to some 
principle governing the realization of the 
initial property" 

(p. 335). 

"Nothing has so far been said to rule out 
the possibility that while Socrates and other 
such persons may each be concerned that 
people IN GENERAL should value the 
realization of justice in themselves because 
of its intrinsic appeal, that is to say, for 
moral reasons, neverhteless, their concern 
that people in general should value 
for moral reasons the realization in themselves 
of justice is based at least in part on 
  CONSEQUENTIAL 
or political grounds rather than on any 
intrinsic or moral appeal" 
  (p. 335). 

"At this point it seems to me we 
move away from the territory of Socrates 
and Plato and nearer to the territory 
of Kant" 
  (p. 336). 

etc. 

Cheers, 

J. L. Speranza 


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