Robin has obviously not tried to obtain tenure in literary criticism.

As for Strauss and so-called Straussians revealing the esoteric meaning of various philosophers, I think they’re just playing a game, and it may well be an esoteric game at that. After all, what are they really about, these Straussians? Has anybody exposed their cult?

es·o·ter·ic
1.
a. Intended for or understood by only a particular group: an esoteric cult. See Synonyms at mysterious.
b. Of or relating to that which is known by a restricted number of people.
2.
a. Confined to a small group: esoteric interests.
b. Not publicly disclosed; confidential.

I’ve read that a form of ‘pig latin’ was even used
by Benjamin Franklin

I think you’re mostly right when you say “Simply don’t make claims about who had the idea (cite it in a footnote to avoid plagiarism) just introduce it the same way you would introduce an idea you heard on the street somewhere.” As Boethius says, argument from authority is a very weak form of argument. But that alone doesn’t mean we shouldn’t read Plato & co.

The only reason I quoted Plato was as evidence of what Plato thought, not as evidence that it is necessarily true. I was trying to show something about the kind of inquiry Plato’s dialogues engaged in.

Your suspicion of the insistence that the ancients had higher inscrutable wisdom is quite justifiable.

But I have deep suspicions about applying the idea of progress to philosophy in the same way that it can be applied to the particular sciences. Philosophy (or at least much of philosophy in the Socratic tradition) is about examining critically the foundations of our thought. The question, for instance, of “what is knowledge?” is one which is difficult even to get people to ask or care about. Serious philosophic knowledge involves a kind of “starting over” that is, unfortunately, difficult to explain or articulate. You can’t just indoctrinate people into it. While of course we have discovered more truths since the ancients, that work of “starting over” is probably quite similar now to what it was then.

Now, I think Plato is actually quite clear, at least when he articulates what his project is, although it’s apparently esoteric to some people. It’s not to impart doctrines (he’s never written a treatise on the truths of philosophy), it’s to try to teach that kind of “starting over”. It’s not that his work “contains important insights that haven’t yet been discerned,” but that it is a teaching tool which has seldom if ever been improved upon.

I’d love to see where anyone has expressed Plato’s insights more effectively and concisely — and perhaps it has been done. But I’m suspicious of such claims for the same reason you’re generally suspicious of people who claim the ancients had access to more wisdom then we do: people who make such claims are generally full of crap. I’m not exactly up on the most recent literature, but as far as I can tell, plenty of people make a living misunderstanding Plato. Most commentators on Aristotle make a hash of him. It’s not that the ancients are smarter than everyone else, but rather that the important things they have to say (and not all of it is important) are also strange and hard to understand.

So I wouldn’t necessarily expect to see someone writing something that does the same things Plato’s work does but better. But I would expect to see people write with a better understanding of the world due to Plato.

Reading Newton and such things, on the other hand, is proper only to get a kind of historical perspective. I agree that it’s not necessarily the best way to learn calculus. But isn’t there some value to appreciating first-hand what kind of change his ideas represent? (I think I’m talking about the same thing Mr. Yudkowski wrote about, when he mentioned understanding how surprising new science is.) And isn’t there some risk of not understanding the preconditions and premises of Newtonian thought if you don’t grapple first-hand with the ideas as new ideas?

Or because they were still confused about the issue and hadn’t yet hit upon the correct way to convey it. I mean if you read Newton’s explanations on calculus or even Maxwell’s original treatise on electromagnetism they are pretty damn confusing and hard to decipher. A great part of this is that they are still confused about what they are saying and how to conceptualize it.

Of course in math and other sciences we solve this by simply not reading the original discoverers. We acknowledge and rever them for their brilliance in discovering the idea but we read others who, building off of their works, have gleaned the good ideas (and left the bad ones) and presented them in a more understandable fashion. In fact this sort of change is exactly what one would expect in any discipline that is making progress. Exactly the same should be true in disciplines like philosophy. Plenty of people have read plato and his important ideas have been incorporated into modern philosophy making actually reading plato a waste of time.

Now I know that some philosophers are going to say that they were inspired to think of important things X,Y and Z when reading plato and that it really contains important insights that haven’t yet been discerned. But that’s the same thing that many non-believers say when reading the bible. If you give people a confusing unclear work and tell them it is saying something deep and important they will project their own ideas and insights into the work. I mean which is more likely: that plato was so supernaturally smart that his ideas are so far beyond what we would think up now that it’s worth spending vast amounts of time decoding them from his works (but he still couldn’t express them clearly) or that he was just a smart dude who had great influence on philosophy as a result of his time and place?

I could go on but the point is that the simpler explanation is that we are projecting value onto the works that are popular objects of academic worship rather than finding real value in them.

But there is a really easy way to avoid this whole debate. Simply don’t make claims about who had the idea (cite it in a footnote to avoid plagiarism) just introduce it the same way you would introduce an idea you heard on the street somewhere. If these ideas are really worthwhile then it doesn’t matter where they come from and they will impress others on their own merits. On the other hand if they aren’t worth it then without the claim that they are really the result of some ancient dead guy’s work no one will care.

One is the “super-secret code” school of interpretation, which is sometimes correct and sometimes silly. Maimonides explicitly declares that he’s writing esoterically.

Then there’s Plato. I could try to describe what his esotericism is, but a quote from his Seventh Letter (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/seventh_letter.html) says it pretty well:

“I did not, however, give a complete exposition [of my philosophy], nor did Dionysios ask for one. For he professed to know many, and those the most important, points, and to have a sufficient hold of them through instruction given by others. [...] Thus much at least, I can say about all writers, past or future, who say they know the things to which I devote myself, whether by hearing the teaching of me or of others, or by their own discoveries-that according to my view it is not possible for them to have any real skill in the matter. There neither is nor ever will be a treatise of mine on the subject. For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself. Yet this much I know-that if the things were written or put into words, it would be done best by me, and that, if they were written badly, I should be the person most pained. Again, if they had appeared to me to admit adequately of writing and exposition, what task in life could I have performed nobler than this, to write what is of great service to mankind and to bring the nature of things into the light for all to see? But I do not think it a good thing for men that there should be a disquisition, as it is called, on this topic-except for some few, who are able with a little teaching to find it out for themselves. As for the rest, it would fill some of them quite illogically with a mistaken feeling of contempt, and others with lofty and vain-glorious expectations, as though they had learnt something high and mighty.” (emphasis mine)

This attitude (if perhaps not the content of what Plato thinks is important) should be very familiar to Overcoming Bias readers. It’s a method or way of thinking, rather than a collection of received truths, that is important.

Plato elaborates, not terrible clearly, in his dialogue Phaedrus, where Socrates says that if a philosopher were to write down instruction for a philosopher, he would have to be careful to write a book that could say different things to different people — that could provide guidance to those ready for it without misleading those who would misunderstand it. It could only lead someone to philosophy — it could not teach the content of philosophy.

I would suggest that at least some of the ancients seem to “hide the ball” not so much because they tried to say it in a difficult way, but rather because the things they were saying are necessarily difficult to communicate. Unfortunately, modern interpreters of such things often seem intent on reading, for instance, Plato’s Republic as primarily political theory and Nietzsche’s “will to power” as a prescription to go boss other people around for the fun of it. I suspect it is often the same type that reads A Modest Proposal as, in fact, a modest proposal.