Eternal love

I have been thinking about romantic love that can't acted upon. There are two basic schools of thought on this, it seems to me. One is that if a love affair can't be had, one should move on, and not be in love with the person any more. On this view, continuing to be in love shows up as pathological, as not being able to let go. There was a conversation on NPR the other day to this effect, in relation to the country song "He Stopped Loving Her Today." The other view is that one loves the other until, well, until one no longer does, but with the proviso that this may well be until one dies, depending upon the nature of what one feels for the other.

As with other aspects of romantic love, I think that our culture is deeply ambivalent about this. Indeed, I am always a little shocked by how un-romantic many people's views are, yet also how contradictory. We disapprove of arranged marriages, for example - "No, no, marriage is about true love," we protest - but then, when Mark Sanford reported that he would at least die happy knowing that he's met and loved his soul-mate - and that she wasn't his wife, with whom he reported not being in love - just about everyone I know thought that he should stay in his marriage. Any suggestion to the contrary was met with derision. Why? Because whether or not one is in love with one's spouse is irrelevant. [Though the anxiety (if he can leave, maybe I or my spouse can leave) and the anger (if I have to be unhappy, he has to be too) in the air were palpable.]

Anyway, I don't know if it is right to think that loving someone forever is a weakness of will. I can see it both ways.

Selves

I'm thinking that if Hume were - was? - right about what the self is(n't), it would be a lot easier to change than it is. For the record, it's harder than it should be, even when you think you're willing. This may even decide this point for Aristotle over Plato, let alone Hume.

Get Smart

I wish I was (were?) a better teacher. I think that there are some parts of it that I am good at. For instance, I'm not a jerk; I feel comfortable in my skin, in a classroom, even in a big huge one, and it's easy for me to be playful and easy. I find weak students perfectly gratifying to work with, so long as they are interested. I think I model a kind of intellectual integrity. I think I'm even a little charismatic, in my own way. That stuff all comes naturally. But the real crux of the matter, in terms of the skill of the thing, is being able to create repeated, well-structured moments in which students can think actively in relation to a bit of content. The best teacher I ever had, art of teaching-wise, always made me think of the opening sequence to the old tv show Get Smart: hallway upon hallway that would end in a sliding door that would open just as the guy got there. The problem is that my own thinking is so profoundly static: I see cross-sections of form/composition. I just do. That's my one intellectual gift. So it's hard for me to create narratives into which students can enter. Specifically: mysteries, with plot turns that students have to work out. Instead I always want them to help me draw a picture. It may seem - though only for a minute - that that could be ok too. But nah. Plot turns are the way to go. And what they hinge upon is posing the right questions. So far I have learned that "In what ways does .... ?" is always better than "Why does ...?" but I have no innate talent for it. Sucks.

For the brilliant Plato scholar in question

I went to a talk yesterday by a brilliant Plato scholar. The discussion period was completely strange, though. The thing is, Plato wrote poetry in the form of dialogue. And he did it on purpose. So, for example, it's not like the Jefferson Bible, i.e., not such that in principle you could just underline all the things Socrates says, and then know, verbatim, what Plato thinks. Sometimes the character of Socrates says things that Plato probably thinks; sometimes he doesn't. Plato is good enough of a writer that the character of Socrates usually (though not always) sounds pretty much like the same, largely annoying guy. So you mostly have to be able to tell how to interpret what he says from having first read - and, eventually, having both read and considered - the whole, and weighing its meaning. Yes, I know, this is circular -- how will you first get a sense of the whole, if you don't know how to read the character of Socrates, especially? And there are entire schools of thought whose claim to fame, from my perspective, is that they got the meaning of the whole wrong. Part of the answer is that it is a work that you have to read a lot. The first time, you can expect to get only that there is something very good and very beautiful, which it is possible to long for, and also to use as a kind of frame of reference, a point of orientation. If the text works on you, then you do long for it, by the end. If this very minimal backdrop is correct, interpretively, then, when you read it again, certain interpretations become impossible. And so on.

But beyond this, when, in the text, it is plain, for example, that the characters are making things up (like, say, imaginary cities) and/or formulating stories that they themselves describe as not being literally true, it doesn't seem terribly taxing, as an interpretive matter, to expect people to realize that they are making things up and/or formulating stories that are not literally true! Really. Making things up. So as to capture something true. But not literally. For some reason, the kind of people who go into political theory and philosophy have a extremely difficult time with the idea that meaning can be communicated in this way. It's just so weird, though. I mean, the guy did not write treatises. He even says why. What would possess a person to nonetheless read his dialogues as though they were treatises?