Pynchon & Math (Aristotle vs. Plato)

[alice wellintown]

> So I checked the Georgetown philosophical courses now offered. Found all variety of names present.  Kant, Hegel, Sartre, Quine, etc.  Also all manner of approaches not least of which was gender equality--in my day girls weren't even admitted.

Yesterday I splurged and paid $2.00 for a used copy of Plato's
Republic. It is in excellent shape. The Translation is a standard,
Benjamin Jowett's Translation. But the Introduction and Notes are by
Elizabeth Watson Scharffenberger. And, I noticed that she is a
specialist in Greek Literature and Comedy and Culture.

Now if that isn't Glory or a Knock-Down-Argument, to quote Alice, or
Humpty, I can't remember who said it, but one or the other did.

See how things are getting better, if not all the time, as the Beatles
say, at least, as time goes by. That our lives in this crazy world
still don't amount to much more than a hill of beans, and that
fascists may still abuse power, manipulate the people by appealing to
their irrational fears, perpetuating ignorance through propaganda,
does not convince me that things are not much improved.

And, for the vulnerable, the weaker sex, the people who have only just
begun to live better lives, things are far better than they were a
decade ago.

There are wars and salvery and poverty and ignorance and serious
problems, like the environmental crisis we are grappling with, and
these might make me less sanguine, but...and here we go down meory
land....

so the other day I mentioned Richard McKeon's _Thought, Action, and
Passion_, and in the Selected Works, Volume II, in the Introduction by
Wayne C. Booth, he tels a little story about taking a course with
McKeon, who had a reputation for being the toughest teacher on the
planet, and, there were only two students, the other was a female. The
first assignment, read the whole of _The Republic_.

Both goes on to describe how McKeon ripped into him for treating _The
Republic_ as a work of fiction.

Now that I think on this I am certain that I read _The Republic_.