A piss-up with Socrates

Preparations are now apace for our TLS debate in Oxford tomorrow: would you accept a dinner invitation with Socrates? Beard, in case you didn’t already know/guess, is on the NO THANKS side (along with fellow sceptic Tom Holland). Those thinking that they would reply with a YES PLEASE are Oliver Taplin and MM McCabe.

I am already, I must confess, resigned to defeat. For a start I have never been known to win in debates like this (not enough punchy, simple , populist rhetoric??). I managed to lose when I was standing up for the Parthenon in a head to head with the Alhambra, championed by Robert Irwin. His pitch was that the Alhambra was very very beautiful indeed. Mine was that the Parthenon not only stood for the whole of western culture, having been pagan temple, church and mosque – but that it also affected us more qua ruin, than any complete building ever could. True – but not a winner in the rhetorical cut and thrust.

Then last year I managed to lose in the Greeks versus Romans debate at Cheltenham. I lost so badly in fact that the Greeks registered more votes at the end of the session than they did at the beginning. In other words my inventions actually lost the Romans some of the votes they already had. The problem is that Hellenophiles find it so easy to stand up and bang on about well springs/originary moments of Western culture: QED. (It is what I should have done when speaking for the Parthenon….)

So what am I going to say about Socrates?

Not sure yet (I write carefully, in case the opposition take a peek).

There’s obviously the points about the lack of women, the aggressive homosociality, the dreadful food and ghastly wine. Easy hits. Anyone with an eye to food would choose dinner with Trimalchio before dinner with Socrates. Then of course there is the dire political legacy…”Our” Socrates wasn’t a nice cuddly Western liberal.

But I think that I want to convict the man from as near to his own mouth as we can get. So my first port of call will be Xenophon’s Symposium – an account of dinner with Socrates that offers a different sort of anecdotage from the usual Platonic stuff.

I shall also be dipping into Emily Wilson’s book on The Death of Socrates – because she is more honest than most on what an irritating creature the old guru was.

But if anyone has got some particularly pointed darts that I might use, please let me know…as soon as possible, please!

I’m hoping by the way to get in the wonderful Monty Python ditty, the Philosophers Drinking Song . . “David Hume could out consume/ Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel./ And Wittgenstein was a beery swine/ who was just as sloshed as Schlegel…etc etc..”  Its rousing finale is most memorable of all, and relevant to this occasion: “Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;/ A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.”

I was so taken with this when I was a young lecturer in London (obviously already working up to tomorrow, without knowing it) that I once recounted it to Arnaldo Momigliano at dinner. He didn’t think it was half as funny as I did.

Comments

[Tony Francis]

Dear A. Alcock: I think it is common to approach Wiki with a sense of "awe of authority", as one might regard a university professor or a publisher. But this is a mistake. People go through Wiki, placing tags like "does not measure up to Wiki's standards", etc. I used to think these poeple knew what they were talking about. But they don't. They could be junior high students, or residents of mental institutions, or just bored idiots. All my articles have been tagged with "not relevant", or "Does not measure up" tags, etc. I thought these meant something. After a while, timidly, I removed one of the tags. Nothing happened. I think there must be some sort of measuring system at Wiki. If an article isn't read, or amended very often, they tag it for deletion. This means you should revise your favorite articles, every so often. If nothing else, just edit it by putting a comma in, then delete the comma. That way, it goes into their master file as an "active" article. I don't know this to be true, but I am suspicious that it is. I also think they are biased against any religious article. That is why I have chosen to revise the articles I have mentioned in another posting. They aren't religious, they aren't of great general interest, and everyone on this site can watch the process to see what happens. I would suggest that you add or delete from Wiki as you see fit. As I mentioned, Wiki is absolute chaos. Useful chaos, but chaos, nonetheless. If some idiot challenges your work, use the "barking dog" theory: start barking loud and in an obnoxious manner on the talk pages. That usually scares them off.

[anthony alcock]

T. Francis. On the subject of deletion I came across a reference to a Wiki article about RGC Levens, whose lectures on Catullus I attended because it was my special book for Mods, that had been deleted. I could not for the life of me understand why. I only ever remember seeing Levens' name attached to a school edition of the 5th Verrine. The translations of Catullus he read out in the lectures were some of the best I've heard. As fruity as Catullus, but hardly enough to provoke damnatio memoriae.

[Michael Bulley]

Has anyone listened to the whole of the podcast of the debate? I'm afraid I didn't make it to the end of the introduction, so cringe-making was it. So I don't know what Mary Beard said. Who won?

[abc]

And bullet has only got one "t" so spelling isn't instinctive when it comes to assault.

[Tony Francis]

Dear A. Alcock: My impression of Wiki is that it is not only nationalistic, but highly variable. The articles are only as good as the last person who amended them. Many well written and informative articles have been edited to death, leaving them virutually useless. Other good articles have been completely deleted. There seems to be no good reason for any of it. If you don't watch the articles you have written or contributed to, you are likely to find them completely unrecognizable after a few months. That's been my experience on Wiki. You can look back through the history of the article to see the changes that have been made.

[abc]

Mary would probably dine with anyone unless she knew that they would actually attack her, in which case she'd walk in with a police guard and a bullett proof jacket.

[anthony alcock]

Nothing to do with Socrates. Have you ever done a blog on Wikidpedia items in various languages ? I ask for the following reason: in one of my elementary Greek teaching sessions here in Kassel, the subject of Carian came up, and I mentioned the name of JD Ray, who is generally considered to have played a major role in the decipherment of it; we looked at the English site, where due credit is given, and then at the German site, where John's name is not even mentioned. How nationalist is Wikipedia ?

[Tony Francis]

Dear Mary: Would you sup with the "bugger for the bottle, Aristotle"?

[Tony Francis]

Of interest to all writers and editors of journals, a federal judge in Chicago has denied a subpoena duces tecum (also called a Motion to Compel) demanding production of peer review records and notes from the journals JAMA and Archives of Internal Medicine issued by lawyers for drug company Pfizer in the matter of a class action lawsuit.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/314/1
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/299.16.jed80000
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpoena_duces_tecum

[Lina]

I think the problem with the debate this evening was that most people think, "I know he was awful and Greek dinners were awful and so on, but it would be frightfully interesting to have dinner with Socrates just once, for the experience of the thing, don't you know?"
Having actually done so, I suspect they'd all realise the validity of your argument and vow "never again".

[anthony alcock]

How could you possibly talk to someone who captained Brazil in the 1982 and 1986 World Cup Final, had a Ph.D. and went to be player-manager of Garforth Town (West Riding) just for the hell of it ? I mean, you'd want to, but how would you do it ? Best leave it to intellectuals like Taplin.

Actually, Mary, it was the Australian Philosophers' Drinking song. With something about a sheep dip. Ok, who was mocking whom? Monty Python mocking the Australians mocking the philosophers of Europe? Well, that's why it's so funny. Socrates, of course, was the start of all this, who was the mocker of the spin-doctors, I mean the Sophists of is time. It may be that Aristophanes was in cahoots.

Paulo

[JIW]

I hope you don't win this debate, Mary, of course. Giving speeches to payign customers sounds a lot like sophistry to me... Also, why not see in Socrates a kindred 'wickedly subversive' commentator...?
Still, I think however good a dinner companion he might or might not have been, he'd be a rubbish colleage:
http://kenodoxia.blogspot.com/2007/01/would-your-department-hire-socrates.html
If needed, you might reach for other philosophers' criticisms of S. Nietzsche wasn't much of a fan, as I remember.

[klimt]

Ah... ADQ... that could be prematurely appropriate, I suppose. After all, he did meet with an untimely end.

[adq]

Now a really fun game would be ejaculating over all of the chairs.

[klimt]

Thought your arguments on R4 this morning were good. Trouble is, up to half the audience might well be either heavy boring drinkers and/or misogynists!

So.. back up plan... think you could do with brushing up on your loud 'poo-pooing' skills, as that MM prof wiped the floor with you with hers. Or.. you could do a Socrates, snort, fart, browbeat, get blinding drunk, grandstand and only go home when the last drop has been drunk and the audience has lost the will to live! Also, maybe a wee domestic half way through... *g* Good Luck. :)

[Nicholas Wibberley]

You are familiar with everything he could possibly have to say?

[adq]

No, no, no. That becomes husband battery. Fine to do a male kick up the arse, you know, boys and all that, humping together, but for the hubby bashing? Nah - although it is good to have a mom who will get out the boxing gloves and teach the lad not to get shat on badly at school. "I'm Big Bad Bill. You piss on my mate and I'll shit on you. Crap. There goes another detention. Duck.". Amazing what boxing classes can do. I'd recommend them, actually. More effective than getting pissed and does nothing to the liver. In fact, makes you kinda fit.

[Kate]

What ever would you do when Socrates' wife jumped on his back in the middle of dinner and began to beat him... talk about an awkward moment!

[Nicholas Wibberley]

You have a prior engagement with some snipers in Illyria?

[Michael Bulley]

Not sure I see what the debate topic is. If it really is as presented here, then it would be logical to vote for Mary Beard if her arguments convinced you she wouldn't accept a dinner invitation issued by Socrates. But, then, where are you going to find anyone in Oxford who thinks logically?

[Serge]

Dear Professor,

I'm sure you know the article "Socrates and Athens" by the late Moses Finley (I think it had been published last time in the "Aspects of Antiquity"), but in case it slipped your memory: you might find there some useful arguments.

Thank you,

S.

[nick]

Mary, based on your performance in the Greeks v Romans debate perhaps you should be looking to defend Socrates in some way.

[Oliver Nicholson]

Socrates and Alcibiades
Were outside under the Pleiades:
Harmodios and Aristogeiton
Were indoors, with the light on.

A.E. Housman
Was no scouse man:
He was at his happiest when he had
A Shropshire Lad

Not sure how much help this is....
OPN

[Richard]

Bad luck for the advancement of women in British universities if earlier generations of female scholars had avoided discussion in the most important intellectual milieux on the grounds of "lack of women, the aggressive homosociality, the dreadful food" (wine perhaps a different matter).

The question is whether you would accept a dinner invitation with Socrates, not whether you would like or agree with him when you got there...

But I think I may not be helping (unless by suggesting arguments you might do well to anticipate...). I hope it is fun anyway.

All best,
Richard

[abc]

There can't be much dining in the Shropshire neck of the woods, eh? I'd rather sing My Fair Lady and something about Hereford Hurricanes don't happen...

[JF]

How's about the point that nearly everything written about him was meant to make him look good and yet he still comes across as a prize twit?

[Xjy]

Perhaps you could persuade him that he is the greatest sophist of them all in Athens and that his disciple P will become the greatest sophist of all time with that Idealism crap, Reality is Illusion, etc, so his best action for mankind would be to shut up shop, get back to his boots, and slip P some wormwood in the Retsina...

Oh shit - that's a reason for ACCEPTING a dinner invitation... :-(

[Jackie]

I'd condemn Socrates purely on the grounds of bad taste! Didn't he reject the advances of the beautiful Alcibiades? Now I'd have dinner with him any night!

[klimt]

He smelt: classic guru-with-poor-personal-hygiene syndrome. That would put me off my dins to be sure.