Yeah, we love picking interestingness for other people and happiness for ourselves. Ha. Relating with Marxy’s last bit in the orignial entry – what does it say about us when we more or less demand that genius figures self-destruct for our entertainment?

To continue to go even more off topic – I think that Nietzsche’s thought WAS about happiness – the idea that transcending limiting Christian values would open up a new direction for mankind that would be clearly superior. Socrates was also about transcending, or at least questioning, but in not junking the whole show, I think that he raised the important issue of balance. In any case, I would rather have a drink with Socrates than Nietzsche.

“Platonic disdain” – we’re never going to figure out what Socrates meant since Plato re-wrote him to fit with his own ideas, but I think that if you take the bulk of Socratic dialogues that we have, the “community” explanation is the stronger one. Could the 5th century Athenians ever have considered it in other terms? The contemporary word for honor “time” (tee-may) more or less meant respect in the eyes of others and this is also a recurring theme in the Socratic dialogues.

“am I the only one who thinks the plot structure of LoTR is suspiciously similar to the Odyssey?”

The Odyssey follows a quest story that pops up in many cultures at many times. The influence on LoTR may be direct or it may be a matter of Jung/Levi-Strauss stuff.

To bring things back on topic – Socrates could definitely have taken Confucius in arm-wrestling.

Since I started off in this thread by mentioning my Dragon Questing, I thought that I would respond to one of Marxy’s twitters – the 1980s model is back in a big way, with all of these polished but Hollow Japanese blockbusters and whatnot, but in video games… Dragon Quest IX is an event, but there is also the one where you swing a sword, the monster collector one, no less than 4 manga, novels, etc. Final Fantasy is even more nuts – there have will be something like a dozen spin-offs, OVAs, etc. between FF12 and 13. In the 1980s, you have Dragon Quest I followed by Dragon Quest II, followed by…. I don’t think that much of the new stuff is great, but there really is a niche product for every gamer that fills the hole between the big releases and most of them will do in the 500,000 copies sold range (or just look at Eva – the anime, manga, pachi-slot, video game, inflatable doll, etc. that just won’t quit). Anyway, I have to go poison three more Magi Wyverns to unlock the Ranger class….

Heh, we are getting off-topic. But if the purpose of philosophy is to make one happy and well-adjusted, count me out. I don’t think philosophy is supposed to be self-help. Nietzsche’s thought might not have been healthy but it made him a hell of a writer IMO, and if I am to choose between happiness and interestingness, I’ll happily(?) choose the latter.

But the point was not even that— my point was, Socrates’ famous «cock» note can be understood in more than one way. At least for me, the more I read on Socrates’s own philosophy (not Nietzsche’s), the more I’m convinced the Nietzschean interpretation is very plausible — that Socrates was expressing not just a Confucian respect for the law but a Platonic disdain for the reality of death.

Speaking of Ulysses manga— am I the only one who thinks the plot structure of LoTR is suspiciously similar to the Odyssey? (Now that was even more off-topic.)

“such culture doesn’t measure up to Greece”

The Greece that we should be idealizing is more or less only about 40 years of 5th century Athens. I think that Genroku holds its own. Maybe not on the “great human civilizations” scoreboard, but for fun.

Niezsche – Is it at all surprising that Niezsche reads Socrates along the lines of his own philosophy? Let’s face it, none of that made Niezsche a particularly happy or well-adjusted guy. Didn’t Socrates also say that his proudest moment was serving Athens on the battlefield?

To tie in one of Marxy’s points with something that I didn’t evoke very well in my earlier comment – “Confucius seems to believe that people should hold their moral values regardless of shame and pressure.” Confucian thought is a pure form of philosophical essentialism. He believes that there is a “good” original human way of doing things (the way of the sages) and that good people act/think/feel along the lines of this orignal character while bad people do not. There is no pluralism whatsoever in the idea of the Confucian “gentleman”. “Rebellion” in this context, is not “revolution” – it simply means trying to reset things to their original state by, for example, removing a leader who has strayed from the “one” path and making room for a leader who has a set of pure and good characteristics in line with the ancients. (Much American discourse on the Constitution – assumed to be a more or less unchanging ideal for humanity rather than something whose parts were read very differently at different times in history – follows this general pattern. Fundamentalist religion also has the same kind of revivalist streak that see in Confucius). In looking at what Confician thought can mean for us today, we really need to junk this aspect of it.

re Edo: yes, town culture; when I think «Edo Japan» I think the floating world, Hokusai, craftsmanship, Bashō, the flowering of Rikyū and Zeami’s work, a surprisingly «sustainable» society (within elite boundaries), &c. Arguably such culture doesn’t measure up to Greece (but then, what does?) — Rexroth called Edo the bourgeois decadence of Japanese art — but I’m too much of a fanboy not to idolize it.

re Asclepius’s cock: If I’m reading Niezsche correctly, he thinks that utterance was not simply out of respect for the law but it was a cynical, bitter comment on the futility of life— which he of course takes to be a sign of décadence and nihilism and sickness and goes all «et tu, Socrates».

Given the way that this discussion is developing, I think that it is also worth quoting the last words of Socrates – the essential “individual” in the Western tradition -

‘Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Do pay it. Don’t forget.’

Right until the end, Socrates was deeply concerned with “the rites” (in the Confucian term) of the community and indeed saw collective belonging, adherence to the taboos, traditions, and values of the group as the background that made his brand of individual self-examination and expression worth it. There are many thought provoking things in the classical discussions of individualism that don’t seem to be making it into the modern, which is a good reason to be taking a deep look at Confucius and friends today.

This scheme科挙 although it’s been imported briefly,didn’t last long enough to be an intellectual tradition.Japanese had rejected the idea of elites chosen by exam instead of blood inheritance still continuing til this day as we’ve seen in the case of Koizumi Junichiro.

“Did the Chinese have their own Macchiaveli?”

I’d assume Sun Tzu would fit the criteria.

There’s long debate on Japanese acceptance of confucianism and frankly I don’t know much about them but that they exist.However,I read one time what Kure Tomofusa was referring that what everyone in Japan forget is Confucius was a dissident intellectual and has many critical idea on politics and possession of such idea too was stated as the virtue and obligation of intellectual.

“Also I’m internally thrilled that Marxy apparently is or was a D&D player.”

He still is a player.

“they have quite a few dynastic changes, which should never had happen given the filial piety & other Confucian virtues”

Confucian values do not only stress one direction of obligation – either in a filial or a national sense. Fathers and rulers also have responsibilities to sons and subjects (for example, not arbitrarily murdering them or subjecting them to “too much” forced labor). In Mencius’ enlightening take on the Analects, he actually argues that it is the DUTY of subjects to overthrow rulers who are not keeping up their end of the bargain. It is actually the Confucian tradition that, out of major philosophies of government and morality, was the first to articulate a detailed basis for popular rebellion. Unsurprisingly, elites tended to de-emphasise this part in later history….

To make a completely superficial comparison to what is going on in Japan now – people are getting pissed at the LDP because they are not holding up their side of the bargain, not protecting the mythologized “Japanese lifestyle” which has historical roots as vague and dubious as the time of the sages around which Confucius bases almost all of his thought. Hence the “kick the bums out” discourse. I don’t think that this is necessarily “inspired” by Confucian thought, but perhaps Confucius put his finger on something fundamental enough to social relations that it transcends time and place. You could, after all, place Obama’s “change” and a widespread assumption of Republican immorality and idea that they should “go back to what makes America great (once again, national mythology)”, into the discussion.

It should be noted, however, that this principle of rebellion was not, to the best of my knowledge, applied to cultural rebellion. Confucius and Mencius both lamented the sorry state of the music that “kids listen to these days”. Of course, part of their interpretation of religion was based in an understanding of its semi-political religious function which has little to do with our tendency to get pissed off when 14 year olds say that Limp Bizkit were better than the Beatles.

“Greece or Florence or Edo Japan”

You mean townspeople culture of Edo Japan, right? The Tokugawa high culture doesn’t belong in that company.

Oooh, I challenge it already. If I try to picture a society made entirely out of 100% modest, patient, socially conscious people, the word that pops to mind is «boring». I see it as a matter of degree; in proper amounts, narcissism, gluttony, pride, bragging, hypocrisy, punk‐like rebellion— all are, I think, not only acceptable but *necessary* for a rich, interesting, Nietzschean-overflowing life. I don’t think old Greece or Florence or Edo Japan would have happened without these anti‐social attributes (nor, obviously, Woodstock). And I want a world with more Florences, not less.

That said, I do bow with all respect to old Confucius for defending the importance of social values, and doubly so for doing it without employing easy paradise-and-hell carrot-stick supernatural promises. Will you blog Lao‐Tse next?

Also I’m internally thrilled that Marxy apparently is or was a D&D player.

Perhaps you could say that legalism was a bit more “Machiavellian” but this is really getting outside of my sphere of knowledge…