Secondly, I’ll agree that it is some sort of fiction to think that this authenticity is metaphysically genuine (whatever that means). But, for all that, sometimes we feel like we have worked our beliefs out for ourselves, or made some deep decision about how to view things. There’s a deeper psychological story to be given about what’s really going on, but even so, there is a pragmatic importance to the phenomenon.

(I think I would be rendered speechless without the phrases “in a way,” “some sense in which,” and “sometimes.” There’s some sense in which I am, in some ways, an anti-absolutist, sometimes. Or, as Paul Valery once said, “sometimes I think, and sometimes I am.”)

Now I don’t want to be too static about this, I think this is dynamic and lived (the subject and his lived experience matters!). But the only adequate ontology of man is an ontology of relations. Nz can’t handle this because he is indeed the last metaphysician, the final philosopher of autonomy. But this only means that he maximized the error of most metaphysics. The “finding of one’s true self” comes only in the lived relation with others (the gift) and in the lived tension between transcendence and immanence. But this is always provisional, because the tension remains a task to be chosen and lived.

I think Aristotle’s Nico Ethics are instructive here. Most readers ignore the late books. The business about contemplation and the “divine in us” seems, to many, to be an unnecessary appendage on the end of a book on ethics. But it is not. Aristotle is on to the truth of man – that his life is a tension (between the ethical and the contemplative, between the immanent and the divine). It is in our nature to be oriented to the Other, both in the ethical sense (world) but also in the contemplative sense (divine). There is always a trace of both in the other activity (a trace of the divine in ethics and a trace of ethics in the divine). Thought and action are not radically divided, traces of each mark out our lives.

The category of “authenticity” makes little sense in this view. “Proximally and for the most part we reside in everydayness” (Heidegger), and this is not a judgment. The reality of man is that we are strung between two poles. The denial of either pole is an error (extreme Platonism that denies the immanent or the opposite, Nz/Foucault, who denies the transcendent).

It is because of the “mediate” position of the philosopher that orientation is so important. This becomes one of the chief concerns for Plato in the Phaedo, Republic, and other dialogues. But I can’t imagine Foucault ever saying such a thing. This because Foucault does not share the sense of truth alive in Plato – an understanding of truth that is irrevocably connected to reality and the transcendent (that is, a sense of truth that is no reductionist). For Foucault, what we experience as “real’ is just a matrix of interpretations shaped by language and power. The transcendent is cut away in Foucault. It is for that reason that I don’t think Foucault is a great thinker. I think the thought that all great thinkers need to think is the lived tension between immanence and transcendence. (This is why my Cont Euro course focuses on Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida and not Foucault and Deleuze).

But you are quite right about Socrates’ being used by many. I posted on this some time ago – how Socrates is a hero to all no matter how different our hats are. I suspect those that read Socrates as a more thoroughgoing skeptic will tend to avoid the passages I have pushed above and focus more on the early dialogues. People like me, who want to read in Socrates in a different way will emphasize those passages, and move on from the early dialogue Socrates a little faster. In some ways I think the Apology, Phaedo and the Republic are the best starting points. This because it is here more than anywhere else that you see the synthesis of these tensions. This because Socrates is the ‘most personal’ in these dialogues, and the tension that is philosophy is hard to synthesize in mind and is best done in living (as Socrates himself shows us!).

Your interpretation of Plato sounds reasonable to me given your quotes and even how Nz characterizes things in the problem of Socrates but Hadot has a different emphasis. He has a lot to say about Socrates. He starts his discussion with this quote from the Apology: “Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is,– for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know. -Socrates (Plato’s Apology – Jowett)” I haven’t spent any time trying to reconcile different aspects of Plato’s thought in various works but it seems Plato’s Socrates contains enough that he, like Jesus, has been worn as a mask by all kinds.

Foucault is Nz’s child. To understand what Foucault means by truth is largely to understand what Nz means (though the will to power has been glossed in more “sociological terms”, relations of power structures).

I know a fair amount of Foucault. I’ve read much less of Hadot, and don’t know much about him beyond his Philosophy as a Way of Life book. I was surprised by the connection between Hadot and Foucault. I sort of read Hadot as an “existentialized ancient”, but one still concerned with the truth of reality and such things. He seems very sensitive to the personal side of that encounter. He appreciates the subject’s experience and the need for subjective transformation, he’s tuned into the subject and truth in the subject without thinking that “truth is subjective”. But this is just my sense based on very limited readings. Foucault has no interest in the truth of reality. And for him, self-transformation will not be oriented toward anything, rather it will be pure artistic freedom.
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I am pretty much Aristotelian in my ethics, that is the root of my connection between virtue and happiness. I think you inculcate the habit of right action using reward and punishment and being a good role model. The truly virtuous person chooses the good for its own sake (not for the sake of happiness). But this seems to come fairly late in one’s moral development. Children have to be formed through the play of pain and pleasure. The most important part of the moral formation of children is teaching them to take pain and pleasure in the right sorts of things. I suppose this is how some use the Santa myth – but I use the Santa myth for Christian ends concerning the meaning of Christian love, not for behavior modification.
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I pretty much take the “profess plus” approach in my courses. Some students in my Intro leave convinced that I am a Cartesian! Some have thought I was atheist (after reading Hume and Sartre). Students do seem to like this approach, and it does make out of class discussions interesting. I had profs like this as a student and thought it was best. That is probably much of the reason for why I do it myself.

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I did not mean to (if I did) equate the “contingent holding of beliefs” to “hating reasonable discourse”. I was pushing Plato, and Plato seems to think that the “contingent” holding of beliefs about the power of reason is insufficient.

But the way I’ve appropriated it is more that genuine self transformation and knowledge of any particular area of inquiry requires immersion, externalities. If you want to become a doctor you go to medschool and start practicing medicine. If you want to know french you’ll be better off in France than in a book. Experience for me is a knowledge trump card so I’m forced to defer frequently. This also implies for me that “know thyself” requires submitting oneself to a variety of contexts (theoretical & otherwise). And what can be gleaned from the philosophical schools and other philosophers generally is methods to better “listen to the gentle voice of each of life’s situations” (Nz).

Do you have any better ideas about what sort of truth they’re talking about? This wikipedia paragraph on Foucault was interesting to me but I don’t know much about him.

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Kliener’s anecdote about his daughter is odd to me because I’d think he’d be wanting to transmit to his daughter that she should be willing to do good even when it makes her unhappy. Maybe that case doesn’t arise?

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How about a teaching method we’ll call “profess plus”. With P+ a professor explains her own views when they come up but forces his students as best they can to face the philosopher they’re teaching on that philosopher’s own terms even when the profs view is at odds with the phil they’re teaching. I can remember facing Kant in one of Charlie’s classes and pushing to the point where it was hard for Charlie to keep walking with Kant but he kept trying I suppose because if he had not he felt he’d be doing a disservice to Kant and the class. I remember feeling the same about Hobbes in one of Wilcox’s classes.

The fact that it was sometimes hard to get at the profs’ opinions in some of the classes made it intriguing to gather what their opinions really were outside of class.

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I’m not convinced that avoiding indoctrination leads to “utter confusion” or that holding beliefs contingently is equivalent to “hating reasonable discourse”.

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As usual, reconciling Socrates on a number of different fronts isn’t easy for me. He is large.

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I’m willing to throw in a few dollars to make Kleiner an “indoctrinate before you educate” t-shirt. Anyone with me?

Worth noting that, in my Intro course, I try not to profess. When we read Plato I defend Plato as vigorously as I can. Same with Thomas, Descartes, Hume. I trust my students enough to let them come to the truth on their own. (By the way, end of class polling over the last few years sees about 40% of the class be Thomists, 40% sign on with Hume, 18% sign on with Descartes and Plato gets just 2% when I ask, “if you had to sign on to one of these views, which would it be?). But mostly, I think, students are hesitant to sign on to something. The end result, quite often, is students who have been “stung by the broad torpedo fish”, who leave the class not knowing what to think. This is largely a good thing, since a big part of philosophy is encouraging questions. But one unsaid point in the article is that wonder need not come from a position of utter nakedness. The starting point need not be utter confusion, a position of no commitments (a la Descartes). In fact, such a position would make real progress toward truth impossible (in the view of Plato, both in the weak and strong view above). The classical view, to the contrary, is that wonder and philosophical inquiry need to begin in right opinion, not utter confusion. This is because wonder is naturally oriented toward something (the good, the true, the beautiful).
So do we do our students a favor when we perform elenchus on them, but don’t follow up with a witness?

Aside: Nothing like big piles of grading to get the discussions going on the blog! :)

“It would be pitiable when there is a true argument that can be understood if a man who has dealt with such arguments as appear at one time true, at another time untrue, should not blame himself or his own lack of skill but, because of his distress, in the end gladly shift the blame away from himself to the arguments, and spend the rest of his life hating and reviling reasoned discussion and so be deprived of truth and knowledge of reality.” (Phaedo 90d)

“We should not allow into our minds [sounds like unquestioning allegiance] the conviction that argumentation has nothing sound about it [that it cannot achieve its end, which is "truth and knowledge of reality"].” (Phaedo 91)

As is usual in conversations with Mike and I, we have a praxis-theoria thing come up. I do not so sharply divide “way of being” from “seeking knowledge” in the way that Mike does. I think Socrates is concerned with BOTH knowing this or that AND being a certain way. These are not either-ors. In fact, what I have been arguing is that, for Socrates, a certain way of being (the philosophical life) requires certain true opinions. And being in a certain way (shaped by true opinion and moral formation) is a necessary condition for coming to know this or that.

I think the word “indoctrination” has not been helpful. Though I don’t want to go where Foucault goes, I can fully sign on to this: “a subject could have access to the truth only by carrying out beforehand a certain work upon himself which made him susceptible of knowing the truth”. I also have some sympathies with Hadot, so Mike and I might not be too far off.
What I mean by “indoctrinatinon” is this: I don’t think one can wait to let the subject “do the work on himself”. At that point, much of the work has already been done. Parents and culture do a lot of the work, before the person is even capable of thinking about it. I am raising my daughters to have certain character traits and beliefs. (All parents do this, it is basically unavoidable). They are much too young to “think critically” about these things. In fact, by the time they are old enough to think critically, they will already be largely formed. Parenthood is, then, an awesome responsibility. Their moral habits will be acquired largely by imitation of Amy and I, along with whatever else they pick up from the culture at large. Their beliefs will come mostly from Amy and I (what we tell her and how we live) along with what she picks up form books and culture.

I used “indoctrination” because sometimes that is what I am doing. To “indoctrinate” is to instruct in fundamentals. Here is a real example: Two nights ago my 3 year old Madeline asked, “Will Santa only bring me presents if I am good?” My reply, “No, honey, Santa will bring you gifts no matter what. That is what it means to give a gift. When we give gifts we don’t ask for anything in return. That is how Jesus loves you, honey. Did you know that? Of course, Daddy still wants you to be good, because in order to be happy you have to be good.” Some time later she was helping me with the dishes, looked up at me and said, “Hey Daddy, I am being good right now because I want to be happy.” I smiled broadly.
Isn’t that a kind of “indoctrination”? Maybe you have a better word for it. I would like a better, word, though I think “indoctrination” gets a bad rap – I consider it necessary and indeed good so long as you indoctrinate with true beliefs (and sometimes even noble lies). I make no bones about this, I will work like mad to get my daughters to believe in an almost unquestioning way that (to take my little lesson to her the other night): (a) Love is unconditional and (b) happiness requires goodness. I am teaching them these things because I am utterly convinced of the truth, goodness, and beauty of those principles. I am, as it were, professing to her.