General Update

The past few days have been quite full of things to do. Where shall I begin?

The men’s group on Sunday night was excellent. I met with three other guys. A few others were invited, but they couldn’t make it for one reason or another. The discussion was small and calm in scale, but the subjects we discussed were certainly not minute or peripheral. Quite the opposite, we agreed to submit to the leadership of one for the time spent in the group—his name is Michael, by the way—recognizing him as the one truly willing to lead the group; we shared various testimonies and thoughts; I gave a quick teaching on evangelism; and very importantly, we talk about the school.
Why are we here? As servants of God, what are we doing? What wisdom can we employ to effectively minister to this community? What is the Holy Spirit telling us? We touched on some of those topics.
Overall, I simply enjoyed the company of other young men who are passionate for God. Again, God has put me in an inter-denominational group, and I think that’s where He uses me most effectively. I’ll keep you updated on our adventures.

My seminar on Monday night was fun. I have a very good group, I gather. I’ve heard some horror stories from other groups about bickering and ceaseless debate, but my Mondays and Thursdays are productive. The conversations flow. The seminar is designed around the idea that we don’t need to agree, but we are investigating a subject together so we need to cooperate.
The Meno is interesting. It begins with the statesman Meno asking this question: “Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught? Or is it not teachable but the result of practice, or is it neither of these, but men possess it by nature or in some other way?” Socrates, as purported by Plato, asserts the inanity of questioning whether virtue (or anything) is teachable before discovering what virtue (any something) is. The incorrigible Meno refuses to let Socrates investigate the nature of virtue, but instead wants to know if it’s teachable, and in reply Socrates takes Meno on a roundabout intellectual adventure to show him that the answer to Meno’s question is pointless and errant without knowing first what virtue is.
Midway through the dialogue, Socrates tries to help Meno by exposing his ignorance—not in a prideful assault, but by showing Meno where one must start to know anything knowable. The place is a state of intellectual numbness (Greek ἀπορία), where one accepts that one does not know something, and is bettered by knowing of his ignorance, because he can move from there into truth. (Before Socrates did that, he destroys the notion that one cannot know anything. Debaters of the day, like Meno, argued “that a man cannot search either for what he knows or for what he does not know…. He cannot search for what he knows…nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for.” The argument is long, but basically he points toward his idea of “recollection.”)
Socrates believes that everything knowable is already known by the eternal soul, and the matter of learning is better yet called “recollection,” for each person has the ability to recollect knowledge by his own means. Meno doesn’t like the numbness, which he equates with confusion. For a moment he realizes that he does not know the answer (he thought he knew and was testing Socrates the whole time), but stubbornly he decides that he does and refuses to investigate the truth about virtue with Socrates. And Socrates, in response to Meno’s resistance, proceeds to investigate Meno’s question and gives him a wholly unsatisfactory answer concerning his original question—that virtue is not learned nor inherent by nature, but rather given to some by the gods when appropriate. Socrates argument is entirely flawed, and he knows this, and it serves to prove his point: whether virtue can be taught cannot be known until virtue itself is known.
That’s my interpretation, anyway. Part of the Johnnie-spirit is that we never read the introductions or interpretations of texts. Above I’ve proffered it for those of you who won’t likely pick up a copy of Plato’s dialogues any time soon.
One of the absolutely fascinating points I found came from Socrates’s harassment of Meno in the first part of the dialogue. Something like virtue is very hard to define. When we see someone commit a virtuous deed, we recognize virtue—e.g. in just judgments, peaceful answers, courageous feats, prudent choices, etc.—but it is difficult to say what ties them together. What about two virtuous men who may be in two unrelated situations doing different things makes them both “virtuous”? For more questions, I encourage you to read the text. It’s a quick read, and it’s humorous.

Tuesday was a good day, also. I had my Personal Essay class in the evening and we critiqued one woman’s essay. On the whole it was a nice piece, though not yet publishable. I’m a bit timid to submit my writing to that group, simply because the focus of my essays are very theology, albeit personal. I suppose timidity has no place there, though. And so I press onward. I think I’ll post the essay resulting from a writing exercise I did last week.

Today went well. I botched a presentation of Euclid’s twenty-eighth proposition (a very easy one) of Book I, but it’s not too important. My tutor encouraged me afterward. Before writing this I took an algebra test—one of the few formal examinations at St. John’s. This is the test that all students must take before the second semester of their sophomore year. If you pass, you can move on. If you fail, you cannot continue at St. John’s. It was simple stuff. And if I fail this one, I have over a year to retake it, study, retake it, study, etc.

Goodnight all. I’m off to read some Aeschylus.