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Melodies and Faces: A Meno Meditation*
Mr. David Stephenson
St. John’s College
Annapolis, MD
November 2, 2012
�Lecture on Meno
Argus, Odysseus's old hound dog, wags his tail once before he dies. His master has
returned after twenty years. Odysseus hides a tear. He has to conceal who he is, until he
can take back his house and win the respect of everyone in his household, including
Penelope. Hardly anyone can be expected to recognize him or acknowledge him without
a challenge. "Move the bed into the hall," says his wife, fully aware that the tree from
which he carved it is still anchored to the earth. Why test him like that unless his welcome
is in doubt?
Because, I suppose, memory always needs testing: we're never entirely sure that what
we recall mightn't deceive us. That friend I ran into at an alumni meeting--so much has
changed in appearance--hair longer or shorter than I remember, a few strands of gray or
white, furrows now line the face, the voice more grainy or gravelly. Is the new suit needed
to broadcast prosperity? Or just a larger appetite? Above all, how has life changed us?
Either the friend or me, the observer? Is either one of us the same person?
Yes and no. Tout ca change, tout c'est la meme chose. But some sameness is
important--not rigid identity, but an underlying kinship. Recognition has a way of restoring
us to ourselves and grasping something new as well.
Recognition
Literature and scripture are full of such scenes. Joseph conceals himself from his brothers
as long as he can. Thomas doubts the presence of Jesus Christ until he can feel the
wounds. Abraham pretends his wife Is his sister. Elektra is prompted to identify her
brother, Orestes, by a lock of his hair; Rosalind adopts a disguise for protection, then
finds other uses for it; Edgar, too, needs to hide behind a false identity, until he can reveal
himself to his blind Lear. Hardest to recognize are characters like Iago, because he
conceals his motives, not just appearance.
But a play is where you might expect to find disguise. That's what actors are good at. It's
what they do best. So when the playwright notifies the audience of a false identity we
always take notice. It's a special event when the imposter is unmasked, the spy
discovered, the intentions of the secret enemy or secret lover are exposed.
Most famous example of all, perhaps is Proust's "Madeleine:" dipped in lime blossom tea,
tasted in a moment of sad repose, the taste of that cookie and that tea slowly, almost
reluctantly, opens the door of memory to Marcel's childhood, and then to volume after
volume of reminiscences. The whole town of Combray wakes up, centered around his
mother, his father, friends and relatives, above all Schwann, whose tragic love affair with
Odette provides the source for most of the developments in the first book of
Remembrances of Things Past.
We can't limit examples to literature, or to what has been described in print. The need to
�recognize and identify reaches all levels of our life, from primitive cells that form our
bodies up to national, familiar, racial, tribal, political and even aesthetic characteristics.
Why should Socrates ascribe learning to a kind of recognition in philosophy, to where
truth and not just motive is at stake? Because, I think, Meno has found a serious objection
to Socrates's whole endeavor, one that threatens philosophy at its core. It is what
Socrates calls a "trick argument,"an "ëristikos logos,"--a debating ploy, if you will--but one
that must be confronted and refuted.
Otherwise no philosophy is possible.
Here is the argument: if you don't know the truth, how can you ever discover it? For you
must know it already if you are to recognize it when you meet it, even the very first time.
Otherwise you are dependent on others to give you the criterion for truth, and rely on their
authority, for which there is no absolute assurance.
One has to take this challenge seriously. The very possibility of philosophical inquiry
hinges on our ability to defeat it.
Meno
Meno holds this weapon in reserve until Socrates backs him into a corner. His first
address to Socrates is bold and confident: "Are you able to tell me, O Socrates, whether
virtue can be taught..." This sounds like little more than an attempt to make fun of
Socrates: "Do you have in you what it takes to beat me in debate...," or, maybe a bit less
aggressively: "Please, Socrates, give me an argument that will defeat others and gain
admiration." For that is the extent of Meno's interest: winning. He couldn't care less about
the truth.
He is not alone. Athens is at a crossroads.
Is Meno serious? Cynical, to be sure. He admires Gorgias and the Sophists, who have
captured the attention of the youth of Athens, with their boast of superiority in speech,
their ability to answer any question and persuade multitudes. The examples that remain
of their orations are smooth and pleasant to listen to, full of half-rhymes and rhetorical
flair: flashy and showy. Just the kind of speech that would attract an audience lacking
principles. Rhetoric is king, and oratory a show. Meno is perhaps a typical admirer, and
wants to go into business on his own, He's committed to winning debate by any means. In
such circumstances, it is not hard to see how a true cynic like Meno assumes that the
only judgment worth heeding is popular acclaim. There is no goal but verbal conquest, no
authority but opinion.
How did such a market place of ideas arise in Athens at that time? Not only is it a
symptom of Athen's decline; it signals the end of the greatest era of Athenian hegemony.
She has sunk low since she and Sparta together defeated the Persians fifty years ago.
�The subsequent split from Sparta and the protracted feud that followed sapped Athens's
strength and resources. The plague devastated its population, the Sicilian expedition
killed off the flower of her army. The crushing blow: almost all Athenian ships--the fleet
that had been her strength--were destroyed by the Spartans under command of Lysander,
cutting off Athens's source of grain and tribute.
Fortunately, despite defeat, the puppet government installed by Sparta was soon replaced
by a democracy again. But democracy has its dangers: in a free market place of ideas,
who is to say which are worthwhile and which merely the flavor of the moment? Perhaps,
the most encouraging result of Athens's loss of political power in the region, one might
say, is that it prepared the way for triumphs in philosophy, much more lasting and
significant in the eyes of the world than her earlier military conquests. We've inherited her
ideas, not her colonies.
Together, these defeats and catastrophes forced her to an ultimate surrender only two
years before this conversation is supposed to have taken place between Socrates and
Meno. Plato had turned thirty at the time of this dialog, and Aristotle was to be born thirty
years hence. So, despite Athens's losses on the battlefield and ocean, her most lasting
effect on the world was just beginning.
Not without cost: Socrates will be condemned to die in three years by a nervous jury of
Athenians, egged on by accusers like Anytus, whose threat to Socrates in this dialog
prefigures the vendetta that will accuse him of impiety and immorality. It is some
compensation that Plato survives to preserve his memory and ideas, and Aristotle to
develop them further and challenge those that need challenging, Without them the loss
would be great. As he states in the Phaedrus, Socrates is chary of the written word. He
never wrote down anything himself. So maybe he had to die to live on in print at the
hands of his friends and disciples.
Judging by the testimony of the dialogs, Athens now becomes the world's free theater of
ideas, with the drawbacks and advantages of that freedom. Its marketplace is the
marketplace of words, where sophist, philosopher and statesman compete for attention
and favor. And so Meno's address to Socrates with which this dialog begins--"Can you tell
me, Socrates (the Greek could be rendered even more forcefully--"do you have proof..."),
whether or not virtue can be taught...?"--may well have the air of hostility, or at least of
challenge and bravado. It soon becomes clear that Meno is at best merely looking for
ammunition, for arguments that will help him win the verbal contest with others. When
Socrates punctures his balloon--gets him to admit that he himself has "spoken about
virtue hundreds of times, held forth often on the subject in front of large audiences...[but]
now I can't even say what it is"--Meno hauls out the crucial, if cliched, argument--the
"eristikos logos"--that prompts Socrates to invoke Pindar and engage the slave boy as
witness. Yet, even in the face of this evidence, Meno disclaims any interest in the essence
of virtue: what he needs is some lines he can steal from Socrates, lines that will help him
in debate, not in the search for knowledge. Winning is all that matters to him (and to much
of his audience). It's all show. A contest. Whoever gains the audience's favor may get
some disciples as well--money for his lectures, even fame--join the ranks of Gorgias and
�Protagoras, travel Greece, Italy, Asia minor, selling rhetoric.
If you doubt the ugly mood at Athens at this time, consider Aristophanes's play, "The
Clouds," produced during the Peloponnesian War twenty years prior to the time of the
Meno dialog. The litigious propensities of the populace in general become the butt of
rather vicious parody: an old man enrolls his son in what Aristophanes takes to be a
school of sophistry led by Socrates, thereby hoping to escape his creditors in the law
courts. But, the joke is, that as soon as he argues his father out of debt, the son decides
he is also justified in beating him up.
Not so hard to see how, in such a climate, Socrates could be indicted for "impiety," and, in
fact, in the defense recorded at his trial, he himself mentions the play as one of his silent
accusers.
The "trick argument"
We have to take Meno's trick argument seriously, and weigh Socrates's response. If
Meno is right, then knowledge is futile. It doesn't exist unless we can recognize it, and we
can't recognize it without prior knowledge. A dilemma!
On the face of it, Socrates does defeat Meno's objection, by introducing the assumption
that we are born with all knowledge implicit in us. We have merely forgotten what we
knew and need reminding. But, consider the cost of this assumption: nothing ever new;
never an advance in knowledge, just rediscovery of what we learned in a previous life.
And how did we learn that?
No, we have to think twice before we embrace the theory of recollection in its entirety,
even if we can reconcile ourselves to the possibility of a conscious life before we were
born, and the loss of that memory at birth. A permanent, changeless universe is the result,
though it does remove the objection on which Meno's argument depends, since the truth
already resides in us forever, only hidden. All we need to do is bring it to consciousness.
On any given topic we both know and don't know the truth. What will remind us? An
image, a word, a shift in point of view? There lies the skill of the teacher.
For we must remember that a teacher cannot just tell us the answer. If we merely repeat a
sentence without fully understanding it, it isn't really our own sentence. Even if correct, it's
what Socrates calls "true opinion." To become knowledge, it must be "tethered,"as he
says. We must be able to "give an account," explain its connection with other things we
are confident of, use logic to explain how this opinion participates in our common
understanding and derives its conclusions from proper inference and argument deduced
from shared principles.
So, despite Socrates's repeated attempts to split Meno's opening question into two--to
consider the definition of virtue before determining how and whether it can be taught--we
end up with the latter question as the central one: can anything be taught? Now, there's a
�question in which we have a special interest. Virtue may require special means, since it
must include a pragmatic element, but the question of what teaching in general may be,
that demands our full attention. How is any learning possible?
Go to the experts, is the obvious answer. Ask them for the truth and memorize their
answers. Yes, but, of course, we have to be sure their wisdom is wisdom, and reputation
alone for wisdom is not enough.
That is, if a passive grasp of what you are told is all you want, then, yes: ask those who
say they know the truth. You don't even need a teacher. Information is available to
everyone--on the Internet, in books. Learn the current vocabulary, and you can fool a lot
of people about what you know. If, however, you want to own that bit of information, if you
want to be able to say why it earns your conviction and respect, then you need more than
the presumption of authority. You must be able to "give an account"" of the reasons why it
persuades you beyond doubt. At that point, you become your own authority.
There is a price to pay for such knowledge, but it is the only kind truly worthy of its name.
The price is inefficiency. How much simpler and quicker to take the assurance of one
who broadcasts his superiority, who has a reputation, one that has cost years of effort and
study to acquire and maintain. Much easier to trust the reputation, join the disciples of
Gorgias, whose persuasive powers, at least, have gained him a flock of acolytes. A few
rhetorical tricks can persuade the casual listener. But, if we want to be secure in our
knowledge, we have to trace every major argument to its roots ourselves, or, even better,
in the company of honest like-minded seekers after the truth.
"Dead Books"
To repeat Meno's question, but with honest intent: how do we look for new knowledge?
Galileo imagines three seekers after truth: one a disciple of Aristotle called Simplicio; one
a proponent of some new ideas about Nature--Salviati; the third a wise and critical thinker
named Sagredo. The last has advice we might all take to heart: "Pray let us enjoy the
advantages and privileges which come from conversation between friends, especially
upon subjects freely chosen and not forced upon us, a matter vastly different from dealing
with dead books which give rise to many doubts but resolve none."
Is he talking about us?
He could be, perhaps. St. John's is a strange school, and misunderstood more often than
not. We take a devious route. If you want to find out something, one might expect to
consult those who claim they know the truth. That's not us. You'll have a hard time finding
an expert here. You won't find another school so full of amateurs. But "amateurs" ought to
mean "lovers of wisdom"--philosophers, that is, true students.
That's why our school is so often misrepresented: Because our name and our reputation
�paint us the opposite of what we are. We're not a religious institution dedicated to
promulgation of the Gospel, and we have no intention of limiting wisdom to the teachings
of "the Great Books." We read those books because they are worthy partners or even
opponents. There's no book we don't argue with and about. It's a tough fight debating with
Aristotle or Descartes, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Most people don't know who we are. Our name and our reputation deceive many. "St.
John's," seems to be a declaration of allegiance to the fourth gospel of the New
Testament, does it not? As for our other best known description as "the great books
school," that inevitably makes many people--like Sagredo--think that we base our
teaching on outdated manuscripts, that the Iliad, Almagest and Principia are our
textbooks, and Plato, Aristotle and Newton our teachers. This all depends on what you
mean by "textbooks" and "teachers."
Teachers and their texts are usually regarded as sources of information, of vocabulary
and method, rather than a voice asking us to think for ourselves. But Plato only teaches
us if we argue with him, and with others who defend him. And Aristotle doesn't seem quite
so old fashioned once you sort the wheat from the chaff; if you take care to distinguish his
mistakes from his insights, you might well learn how to do that for yourself when the latest
best seller or political debate captures your attention for a moment.
As to our religious connection, all of you know that we try to read and talk about the Bible
with no more and no less reverence than we read and discuss any other book. Faith
imbues that book with special meaning for some, so we have to learn how to define and
communicate across the bounds of faith. That's another version of how seriously to judge
a claim to authority.
In retrospect Sagredo's critique turns into a question: "What kind of reading and teaching
promotes learning?" And if the authors of the books we read are not authorities, how can
they teach us anything? Whose authority can we trust?
Recognition--the backbone
At Homecoming and on parents' weekend it is not unusual to run into former students and
friends without being sure who they are, Such encounters prompt an unusual state of
mind: one of simultaneous knowledge and ignorance, of familiarity and strangeness. I
remember the face, and yet the hair has grown gray or disappeared or changed so
radically in style that it is hard to see how anything remains to recognize. The face may
well have darkened or broadened, acquired new lines and furrows, added or subtracted a
beard, glasses, jewelry. How can we possibly identify an acquaintance after so long an
absence and so many changes in shape and color?
There may be a gene for such recognition, but I don't have it. My wife does. Despite the
forgetfulness of time, she identifies a chum from high school or even elementary school
that she hasn't seen since childhood. I'm usually left with no more than a nagging
�impression of familiarity without any apparent reason for it, no single feature prompts a
name or the memory of an action or of some feature that will help me identify the
stranger.
Recognition plays a part in music as well, especially where the tune does not rely on text.
And our ability to recall a tune when transposed to a different key, or even when
decorated with trills and other ornaments proves the existence of a profound access to
the essence of melody. How else can we explain the delight we take with theme and
variation, with jazz and improvisation of all kinds? (Play examples, e.g. First variation of
Beethoven's riff on "God Save the King"). Our ability to identify melodic similarities
reaches deep, and can form the basis of theoretical analysis. (Consider 3 tunes--one from
Borodin quartet, Rusalka's aria; "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"). A descending scale
forms the backbone of each of these, and despite their obvious differences, they also
cannot conceal the kinship this skeleton provides.
What connects and what distinguishes different melodies is the basis of enormous
insights into musical theory. Bach discovered that you can stretch out a melody or
compress it, even turn it upside down: we still recognize it. The one transformation that
escapes us is reverse order of tones. Play a tune backwards and few if any of us will
recall its original. (Example, maybe: first phrase backwards of "God save the king..."
i.e., "My country, 'tis of thee...") Unlike faces, music belongs to time and time belongs to
music. The Beatles and Led Zeppelin experimented with such retrograde melodies in the
Eighties, and generated controversy as a result of what came to be called "backmasking."
What were they hiding? Did there songs contain a covert message? Were they spies?
Delivering coded reports? They meant all in fun, but some people saw a potential threat in
their games. For us this proves only, that music advances forward in time, never the
reverse.
So symmetry plays little part in a melody as it does in a face, since we don't hear it as
such. Spoken or sung, words fall in between these extremes: time and tone inhere in
poetry; less so or not at all in prose. And forced verbal symmetry only becomes a riddle, a
palindrome. Contrast this with melody: Whatever identifies it belongs to time--not just to
succession in time, as does speech--but to measured time, to rhythm. Faces, on the other
hand, belong to spaces, though they do need orientation to be recognized. Not
temporally: What turns out to be essential to our perception of a face is uprightness:
vertical orientation. A face upside down somehow loses its identity, much as does a
melody played backwards. Where Melodies display their profiles bit by bit and only in
time; faces sound all their notes and tones in space, and all at once.
What about thought embodied in words? Like melodies in time or faces in space, words
may actually obscure the truth if their orientation doesn't suit us. Rhetorical manipulations
can distort the message intentionally or unintentionally. Does the form of myth that
Socrates favors or his mode of questioning distort or amplify the truth? I suspect that his
images make clearer his ideas--for example, maybe we do often sit in some kind of cave
of our own heritage and custom until someone helps us rise, turn and escape. Such a
myth may reveal the truth of our condition better than a more traditional depiction in terms
�of politics and education. Or perhaps the dialectical method is what brings us face to face
with the truth most immediately by circumventing our prejudices. It is worthwhile hunting
down the forms of discourse that clarify meaning and distinguish them from others that
may distort or obscure the text.
The powers of recognition affect our lives in all kinds of crucial ways. Even our cells--the
very elements of our bodies--need to identify one another. And sometimes such kinship is
misleading, as when a cancer cell pretends benign kinship rather than danger and
hostility to the body it inhabits. The cells we see growing out of control: they are our own
cells, aren't they? Could they possibly be harmful? In a Darwinian world, it is important to
distinguish true friends from enemies as soon as possible.
Back to the Meno.
The Meno--how is learning possible?
Is the struggle to identify aging faces similar to what goes on when try to learn
something? In the dialog in which Meno is his principal interlocutor, Socrates says 'yes:' it
is just a matter of recollecting what we have forgotten, since, before we were born we met
all knowledge, and merely need to recall it.
Now, it is true that the effect of arriving at the truth may resemble the pleasure we feel at
meeting an old friend whom we may have forgotten in his or her absence. But, if the only
way we discover anything is by recalling it, then we never learn anything new. We know
everything knowable already; it just slips our minds until someone or something reminds
us. Mired in the past, we never advance, always playing "catch-up."
Such seems to be the consequence of embracing Socrates's suggestion that learning is
just recollection. Moreover, this theory doesn't really explain how, even in a previous
state, our soul ever found out anything. Were we told the truth, and just accepted this
passively? What kind of experience unavailable to us in this life on Earth discovers the
truth to us before we are born? And why is it no longer open to us? And if not confronted
during our lifetime, how can we ever understand it outside our mortal existence.
The stultifying consequences of relying on a literal reading of Socrates's tale of
recollection must have given him at least some doubts. It is Meno's attack on learning in
general that prompts Socrates to respond in this way. For Meno has delivered a nasty
blow to education: how, indeed, can we learn anything worth knowing if we don't already
know it well enough to recognize its truth? Does truth prevail upon us with reliable signs
of its validity? And why are they reliable? No, one might well follow Meno blindly into the
abyss that ascribes all knowledge to authority, to the force of rhetoric or politics, to belief,
not knowledge. Knowledge, according people like him, is just information. We "learn" by
dictation. Someone in authority tells the "truth," and we adopt it until another contradicts
with greater force, that is, one might be tempted to say: with greater truth.
�But even if Socrates's myths and demonstrations are his means of combatting defeatist
formulas like the one Meno dredges up at this point, how are we to take them? If literal,
the myth of recollection leaves us in a static world of fixed and finite knowledge: we never
discover anything new, just recover what we already knew but forgot. Is there a less
restrictive way of understanding "recollection?" Some way that encourages us to explore
and find out for ourselves?
One thing we must agree on: any assertion must acquire a verbal form for us to be
capable of weighing and examining its truth.
In the Theatetus, Socrates speaks of himself as a "midwife," someone who merely assists
at a birth, someone who helps decide whether the birth of an idea that produces real
offspring or just a "wind egg." Here arises the possibility of a real advance in knowledge,
for whatever idea this verbal "child" represents inherits nothing from the "midwife," but
solely from the "parent," the one who first puts the idea into words. So, Theatetus does not
have to rely on previous existence or experience to articulate the truth. His definition of
knowledge, for example, may be evaluated independent of its "parentage," as soon as it
is born into verbal form.
Here is one way out of the dilemma presented by the theory of recollection: learning is not
just recognition of something already known, but can be the birth of something new in the
soul. Thus also the slave boy in the Meno dialog: once he has been shown a line upon
which to build the double square, he must examine it and test it to make it knowledge and
not just true opinion--"tether it" so that it won't run away, as Socrates says. You don't
really know anything unless you can account for it with a logical argument that ties it down
and makes it yours.
How important is it that the slave boy received help to discover the proper line? It doesn't
detract from Socrates's refusal to claim ownership of this line as long as the boy accepts
the diagonal as a mere candidate for what is sought, one that ignores any influence of the
teacher, of Socrates. The line is like a hypothesis--it gains acceptance with testing. The
more we wrestle with a hypothesis, the more it persuades us.
There is another advantage to be gained from this "maieutic theory" expounded in the
Theatetus: one discovery can prompt others. Thus, the diagonal that solves the problem
posed by Socrates in the Meno has properties interesting to explore. Were the slave boy
encouraged to examine this line in relation to the sides of the square he might possibly
notice that they are not commensurable: no line, however small, can measure both side
and diagonal precisely. Here could begin a whole new science, one which makes clear
the essential mathematical difference between arithmetic and geometry. Surely it is no
accident that we discover Theatetus at the start of his dialog eagerly exploring the nature
of incommensurability as expressed by surds: what we would call square roots and their
relations: the incommensurables.
The recollection myth (I think at this point I can call it a myth) recurs in the Phaedo. But
there it is the face of death, not ignorance that inspires the tale. It is the day assigned to
�Socrates's execution, and Socrates realizes that he must find a way to comfort the friends
and disciples he will leave behind when he swallows the poison. So he must convince
them that he will survive death: the soul lives not only before birth, as the theory of
recollection requires, but after death as well. Immortality!
But forgetfulness as well. The same dilemma confronts us as in the Meno. Our mortal life
never teaches us anything, says that dialog, at best recalling what we learned before we
were born. The world of ideas fixes us forever the same, nothing new ever greets us.
One more dialog comes to mind, when we search for the answer to the question of how
learning is possible: the Phaedrus. An indirect answer, perhaps, but a compelling one:
"Beauty alone has this privilege," says Socrates, "to be most manifest to sense and most
lovely of them all" (i.e. of the forms of the virtues, like temperance, justice and wisdom-c.f. 250d). That is, we fall in love because we see the form itself of beauty, and by this
passion can recognize the fact that we have come face to face with an ideal, with a
platonic "eidos," or form, something usually obscured by our bodies, by failures to
describe it in language, by the conflict of needs and desires, by the distractions and
exigencies of everyday life.
Now, Socrates maintains that sight is the clearest sense, and the faculty that affords us
the best glimpse of beauty. But I wonder what music has to contribute to the longing for
virtue, knowledge and wisdom. What appeals to the eye and what appeals to the ear
should have something in common, if we call both the sight and the sound "beautiful,"
even if that common thread of beauty eludes words. Socrates does not mention it, so
focused is he on dialectic and discourse, but experience can sometimes be better shared
without relying on textual explication. Try to tell someone who has never been in the water
how it feels to dive or to swim. No, you have to get your feet wet to know what swimming
is.
Many of us think of music as song. The latest hit is almost always identified with its text.
But the marriage of words and melody is always uneasy. It is tempting to consider the
music as derivative: first came lyrics, then we "set them to music," much as we might add
illustrations to a story. Hardly ever does the music come first.
If we go back a few hundred years, however, we find a different story. The seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of our own millennium brought about a revolution.
Instrumental music freed itself from text, made it clear that words could get in the way. In
prior centuries, a band might decorate a dance or a dinner, but I doubt anyone thought of
celebrating the music for its own sake, other than to provide a pleasant background.
We've come a long way since then. A symphony or a sonata doesn't sound incomplete
because lacking text. In fact, words would interfere and distract from the purely musical
experience. Think how silly it would be to add words to a Beethoven symphony, e.g.
"Beethoven's Fifth...Gives you a lift." An advertising jingle at best!
Opera? Well, yes. It evolved during the same time that instrumental music branched out
on its own. But there's always a shaky marriage between text and music, and in practice
�almost inevitably we regard the words as primary, the music as at best commentary and
illustration. We do associate musical gestures with energy and passion, but with little
precision. Is an aria delivered with love or anger? To find out for sure, we consult the plot,
character and lyrics rather than the melody or rhythm.
The music can, of course, compliment the passions called for by the drama, and raise the
level of enjoyment far above cliche or awkwardness in the words sung. In which case we
might well choose to ignore the textual details, retaining only its general sentiment. But to
omit all reference to the character's role and the immediate circumstances of plot would
defeat the purpose of the opera. As for listening to music without words, much of the
richness of that experience depends on transformation and recognition: on our
extraordinary ability to detect similarities in a melody even when transposed to a different
key or mode, decorated with trills and other musical flourishes, stretched out or
compressed in time, altered rhythmically: in short, to recognize a melodic profile.
So song writing or musical drama must always present a struggle between two very
different arts: a fruitful struggle, perhaps, but always a rivalry. Whatever can be expressed
in words will almost inevitably capture our attention first, since that can prompt debate in
words. But something immediately displays its absence if we eliminate the music and
read a libretto like a drama. Can the same thing be said were we to hear an opera without
words, or even sung in a language we don't understand? As is true of most operas we're
likely to hear.
An article in the July issue of "New Scientist" (?) talks about new technology to help
identify nuances in facial and vocal expression that convey subtle but significant
information about emotions, nuances that we are aware of perhaps only half the time but
are reliable indicators. Companies have already invested in instruments--e.g. special
glasses--to amplify and interpret such cues in order to increase sales. Scary!
Not quite so frightening, perhaps, if we recall (from the tale of Odysseus's dog, Argus)
that animals are quite adept at simple recognition of that kind: of mood and attitude as
well as physical identity. Peculiar to mankind is a much deeper and more subtle kind of
recognition. We at least try to glimpse the face of truth and the melody of justice! (Or the
face of justice and the melody of understanding.)
Our powers of recognition extend all the way from cell to sensation to thought.
Socrates would be suspicious of the claim to musical recognition, if for no other reason
than the difficulty we have talking about pure music without relying on cumbersome
technical jargon.
The problem is more acute with the printed word than with sheet music, for words can
signify silently, music can not. It is not necessary to translate a sentence into speech-spoken speech, that is--for it to mean something, whereas silent music is no music at all.
Except in the case of poetry, it is not the experience of hearing speech that is important,
whereas it is precisely perception of the pitch, timbre, dynamics and rhythmic profile that
makes music what it is, Thus, our pleasure in listening to a concert may be complete
�simply in listening to it, but there is always something missing when we read a dialog.
Reading it aloud wouldn't help much. We can't share thoughts in the same way as we
share music. Music comes alive with performance. A dialog must be generated anew from
principles and ideas, melted in the cauldron of conversation before it comes to life again.
None of this denigrates the power of music, but it does make a spoken dialog a more
precarious mode of communication, in which the reader or auditor must participate as an
act-er not as an act-or. That is, one can only play a genuine part in a Platonic dialog by
confronting its ideas directly, seriously, honestly, refuting them where possible; adopting
them where necessary, and always with another person to respond, argue and speculate
on his or her own behalf. Perception of a dialog alone is not enough. One must join in,
and not just pretend to. Everyone's knowledge and understanding are at stake.
Immortality
So, as far as the Meno is concerned (or any other Platonic dialog, for that matter) we
have to interpret, not swallow whole. It's not gospel. Indeed, when I'm listening to Plato,
the gospel itself isn't "gospel," for that requires a faculty of judgment none of us are born
with, and hence has to be granted us by divine dispensation. As Kierkegaard says, when
Plato speaks no special monitor provides the condition necessary to understand what is
said. We can discover his meaning for ourselves, and without Plato's help. My own
attempt to wrestle with the dialog is for my benefit, no one else's. I harvest what I can
from that struggle, taking care not to fall too easily under the spell of Socrates (who does
indeed perhaps resemble the torpedo fish to which Meno compares him--I have to be
careful not to be numbed by his wonderful myths and images). Reading the gospel as
"gospel," however, requires privileged access.
Many of the dialogs, including the Meno, refer to a kind of immortality, insofar as they
focus on the soul and its being and existence and fate. Our bodies grow, age and perish;
the elements of memory, passion and reason that we want to identify with soul evolve in a
different way, for, although some faculties may weaken with age, knowledge accumulates,
and to some extent makes up for losses in speed and power. So, one is tempted to follow
Socrates's lead in ascribing a life to the soul distinct from the body.
But what kind of life? Do we survive as ourselves after death? With all the personality and
memories we call our own exclusively? Could we have existed preformed and preinformed
even before we were born, as Socrates claims in the Meno, Republic and other
dialogs? And, if we are not to take either of both of these hypotheses literally, how are we
to interpret them?
We have already mentioned the disadvantages that accompany an assumption of all
knowledge preexisting in us before birth: the rigidity involved in permanence, the lack of
possibility of growth, of true discovery and learning. If, with Aristotle, you assume the
existence of an omniscient mind of some kind, then we are perpetually groping towards
something that always exists, however elusively, out of our reach. The truth does not
�grow; it is we who grow towards it (if we are lucky and persistent).
Plato's intellectual cosmos seems to take a similar stance: "the soul has learned all
things." But, to corroborate this myth, Socrates engages Meno's slave in a demonstration
that leads further than the myth itself. For it looks as if the boy really learns something,
something we don't have to assume he already knew but forgot, despite Socrates's
insistence. The one part of the demonstration we must hold on to is the birth of the new
geometric notion in his head, and, consequently, the curiosity and insight that birth must
invoke. It is even possible, that, were he not a slave, the boy might have pursued some of
the thoughts that inevitably spiral out from this discovery of the square's diagonal, in the
way that Theatetus must have done under the tutelage of Theodorus: new thoughts about
incommensurability and number and geometry. And so knowledge can grow and advance
without the memory inherited from a prior existence, which could well turn out to be more
an impediment than a help.
Of course, such new knowledge must be evaluated and tested. That is how it crystallizes
into true knowledge. To begin with, it threatens to run away, like the statues of Daedulus
(which were so lifelike, they could escape without warning.) It must be '"tethered,"as
Socrates explains in the latter part of the dialog, it must be supported by argument, by a
"logos," an account that answers potential objections or misunderstandings, that links one
bit of knowledge to another to build a coherent whole. Just presenting the argument as a
whole doesn't work. Each individual must make the connections himself or herself for it to
advance from opinion to knowledge.
So, the Socratic myth that best introduces the possibility of a true advance in knowledge
is rather the one that makes the teacher a "midwife" rather than a lecturer. Or maybe I
could suggest another myth to supplement this one: a gymnast. Socrates is your
opponent, a worthy opponent. Don't let him distract you or flatter you with his charming
tales and images. You must wrestle with him and his ideas if you want to discover your
own. No. He's not present? Then, let someone else take his part.
Gymnastics and music: some of you may recall how these two disciplines played a major
role in the education of the young in Socrates's republic. There they were intended to
balance the soul at an early stage of learning, before our full skill in verbalization has
developed. But even after we have developed the ability to speak and argue, gymnastics
and music continue to support the advance of understanding, each in its own way.
Gymnastics becomes more a struggle with words and ideas than with bodies,
transforming itself into dialectic. Music evolves into the participation in what I have to call
the spiritual legacy of mankind, in an experience that transcends the separateness of
individuals to share the best of imagination, thought and perception we all inherit from a
universal past: universal because it has no specific interest in physical desire and
necessity. The musical world cannot be measured nor limited by scientific tools, but only
enjoyed by the human being as a whole. To relish the full experience, you have to listen
and think at the same time.
But for us to take part in this artistic resource in music--as in the legacy of argument and
�discussion--we need notation, we need to capture and preserve the experience in some
symbolic form that can inspire performance. For music, this requires a notation; for
philosophy we need the printed word.
Socrates himself doubts the efficacy of print. Too dumb and inflexible. Lysias's speech, for
example (in the Phaedrus) gets torn to shreds by the subsequent dialog. But it also
spawns competition on the part of Socrates to elevate the discussion with image and
argument: e.g., by introducing the charioteer, Thoth, the Egyptian god of hieroglyphics,
and Typhon, the windy abductor, who may still haunt the grove where he and Phaedrus
find shade and conversation. In the end we have to question Socrates's own concern for
privacy. After all, he refused to write anything down, and, as he seems to assert at the
conclusion of the Phaedrus, warned others against the soullessness of print. Without a
speaker, speech becomes a fossil. Don't freeze your speech. It will be misread and
misunderstood and won't be able to defend itself. It always needs an advocate.
So, had Plato not dared to disobey his mentor, we would all be at a loss, not only for the
opinions expressed in the dialogs, but for the chance to challenge and modify and
develop them, make them our own, take a step forward in philosophy, progress beyond
where we were. The danger of misstep and mistake is always there, yes, but that's what
friends (and even enemies!) are for: to help us when we stumble.
There's another reason we have to be grateful for print and paper. Over the centuries
we have accumulated a great legacy of literary, philosophical and musical works. We can
participate in our inheritance whenever we choose--actively in the case of philosophy;
passively for most of us in the case of music. Philosophy is in its nature never complete,
always searching. Music, on the other hand asks for performance, yes, but not for
substantial changes. It is enough just to become a part of that world created by gifted
composers in the past, and we do so whenever we listen attentively. We have no interest
in changing or developing an argument in music, as we do in discussing prose. Sharing in
the musical experience is our aim, not improving it. Participating in our artistic inheritance
is a form of immortality, one accessible to all of us.
Conclusion
There are several different ways in which we can learn, then. We can adopt the
vocabulary of another person, naming things and ideas with sounds and groups of letters
that have been accepted as common reference to those things and ideas. That is the
level of simple information. If we don't know the name of an animal we saw, we can
describe it until our description recalls a picture to our interlocutor, and prompts a name:
"large, heavy, gray, with a nose hanging down in front like a hose..." "Oh, you mean an
elephant"
For such recognition all you need is someone who speaks the same language. But with a
concept like "justice," you need an especially thoughtful correspondent, one who can
develop the idea both in opposition and in agreement. That's part of the "tethering"
�process. It's clear that the latter approach is the one that might expand the bounds of
knowledge, building but not dependent on a common vocabulary through which we can
conduct the dialog. So, yes, we need both types of learning and teaching, and the right
balance between the two kinds of knowledge isn't always easy. If I am drawn more the
latter, that is because it alone includes the possibility of advance in our human desire to
grow, to find new planets to visit and new ideas to explore. The other kind--information-becomes easier to find every day. But it's borrowed knowledge at best: a "statue of
Daedulus, if you will, that we can admire at a distance. To dwell with it long enough for it
to become part of ourselves, to become "second nature," so that we can explain and
demonstrate well enough to engage and convince others: that requires more effort than
we may be willing to give it. But if we don't tie them down well, these "statues" will run
away. We'll be left with mere information, with hearsay, not knowledge. The serious
pursuit of music and gymnastics--of their mature form in art and dialogue--can achieve
the balance of thought and experience which was what Socrates sought to create in both
child and adult.
The prescription of both gymnastics and music for education does not cease when we
move into adulthood and acquire skill at putting our thoughts into words. I may disagree
with Socrates here to some extant, because he seems to be all too quick to discard what
our eyes and ears can contribute to the well-being of us as sensitive as well as rational
creatures, capable of perception as well as thought. Dialectic can embody elements of the
both disciplines in a mature form: let gymnastics graduate into the art of wrestling with
words rather than bodies; let music become the search for harmony in general, for the
reconciliation of differences. But gymnastics should continue to exercise our bodies in its
original form as well, and music to delight and lead our sentient selves into the
participation in the beauty and truth which our most talented and ingenious predecessors
have made accessible to all of us whenever we want. Human wisdom, the creations of the
human mind and spirit, belongs to all of us; we take nourishment from it when we will.**
* The title page was added by the catalog librarian at the Greenfield Library. The title of the lecture was taken from the
St. John’s College 2012/2013 lecture schedule.
** The last line was transcribed from the recording of this lecture.
�
Dublin Core
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Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
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paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
16 pages
Dublin Core
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Creator
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Stephenson, David Hanford
Title
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Melodies and faces : a Meno meditation
Date
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2012-11-02
Format
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pdf
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on November 02, 2012 by David Stephenson as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Rights
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Type
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text
Subject
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Plato, Meno
Language
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English
Identifier
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Bib # 80766
Relation
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<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/57">Audio recording</a>
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/eee0211d07b712277a350347ace400f2.MP3
0ff2c4ae192cab0560c04336a5c49812
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
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CD
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:00:31
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
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Stephenson, David Hanford
Title
A name given to the resource
Melodies and faces : a Meno meditation
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2012-11-02
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 2, 2012 by David Stephenson as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Subject
The topic of the resource
Plato, Meno
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 80765
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/58">Typescript</a>
Friday night lecture
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