[Buddha-l] The Shape of Ancient Thought

[Steven Rhodes]

Dear Richard,

Well, you might want to scratch Ahmadinejad off your "approved" list:  
go read the article about him in today's NYTimes.  He wants to purge the 
universities of liberal and secular professors.  My, where have we heard 
that before?

As to Socrates, I remember reading the Penguin pb. The Last Days of 
Socrates in college and being incredibly moved by it.  A friend of mine 
read The Apology in Greek class and broke down in tears.  From your 
reportage, it seems like those days have passed.

Steve



Richard Hayes wrote:

>On Wednesday 06 September 2006 14:52, Malcolm Dean wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Readers should be aware of the larger debate which encompasses the
>>questions of culture and cultural transmission, Cognitive Archaeology,
>>the transmission of ideas, and memetics (not the same thing). 
>>    
>>
>
>For most of my academic career I have been astonished at what enormous 
>conclusions classicists draw from very skimpy evidence. Some of my teachers 
>seemed bent on showing that anything good in India must have come there from 
>the Greeks, while others, the reverse Orientalists, seemed just as determined 
>to show that anything of value in Europe must have come from India. (Some of 
>my LSD-loving friends were convinced that both Greece and India got 
>everything of value from Atlantis or Roswell.) My own tendency was to meet 
>this whole question with a big shrug. (Shrugging has always been my main 
>source of aerobic exercise, so I do it as often and as vigorously as 
>circumstances will permit.)
>
>Admittedly, I am a exceptionally poor historian and have never been able to 
>get a handle on how historians think. I'm even worse at social sciences, As 
>for Cognitive Archeology, the fact that I've never heard of it is almost 
>enough to convince me that there is a god who has been protecting me until 
>now. (The fact that I have now heard of Cognitive Archeology is almost enough 
>to convince me that my protector god is dead.)
>
>While historical and paleographic ruminations bore me almost as much as 
>philology, I have to confess to finding philosophical questions always 
>intriguing. That being the case, I can warm up to people like Mark Siderits 
>and Jay Garfield and James Duerlinger and Bill Waldron, who discuss Indian 
>philosophy by bringing in classical, medieval and modern philosophical ideas 
>for contrast. Trying to figure out to what extent Vasubandhu is a bit like 
>Hume or Locke or Parfit seems a better use of my time than making wild 
>guesses about whether the Buddha might have said something that eventually 
>found its way to Athens in some barely recognizable form. 
>
>But one's love of philosophy and disdain for the social sciences is surely 
>just a matter of personal taste, of no greater significance than the fact 
>that I love jazz and hate baseball, basketball and even ice hockey.
>
>Speaking of tastes, I am discovering that tastes have changed considerably 
>during the past forty years or so. I grew up with a generation in which 
>people read the trial of Socrates and beat their heads in agony that such a 
>wise and sensible man should meet such an ill fate at the hands of 
>petty-minded demagogues. (We still cheer on Chavez, Obrador, Castro and 
>Ahmedinejad as they rail against the idiots who are running and ruining 
>America and the rest of the world.) Now when I teach Socrates to the current 
>crop of freshmen, they openly confess they can't stand the guy, because (they 
>say) they find him arrogant, sarcastic and sacrilegious. (Yes! That's why I 
>love him! How could anyone NOT love someone who manages to be so brilliantly 
>arrogant, sarcastic and sacrilegious?) 
>
>What is happening to our youth? Is it because they eat 47 tons of sugar by the 
>time they have hit the age of 18 that they like only people who are cloying 
>and saccharine? Have they no taste for the sour and the bitter? Can they only 
>giggle and purr? Can they not scowl and growl?
>
>Now I've gone and worked myself into a fit of vituperative curmudgeonry. I 
>need to go do some serious shrugging.
>
>  
>

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