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Post 0

Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 6:22amSanction this postReply
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Nice essay, but did you type this using voice recognition? That should be "chained underground" of course. Sorry to start off your good thread this way, but it seems important.

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Post 1

Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 6:28amSanction this postReply
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I don't believe Rand had Plato in mind when she wrote Anthem.  Her tale appears to be a retelling of the Prometheus myth, which she references elsewhere and which seems to have made a great impression on her.

Post 2

Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 6:56amSanction this postReply
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Fred, in your rewording, you again say "a group of people live changed." This, too, should be "chained." 

Post 3

Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 8:18amSanction this postReply
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I agree with Robert Davison. It's my sense that Rand did not engage in literary allusion beyond a basic level, as when she created Lois Cook or mentioned Prometheus. It would be contrary to her whole nature to act like James Joyce or T. S. Eliot or Harold Laski, with their "name-dropping literary phoniness" and subtle, elaborate references. Besides, she quite consciously strove, from The Fountainhead on, to create self-contained works that as far as possible were independent of their time.

(It would seem that the errors re "changed/chained" started by someone's using a voice recognition program. Such errors are harder to catch than the usual typos, since the output is never misspelled. My article 667; or, How Objectivists Are Not Materialists was entirely written this way from sketchy notes [hence its style reflects my tone of conversation], and despite careful proofing a few mistakes remained.)


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Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 9:28amSanction this postReply
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Rodney, which voice recognition software do you use?

Fred, if you use similar software, which brand do you use?


Post 5

Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 9:37amSanction this postReply
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Dragon Naturally Speaking 6. I hear the latest version is even better, and even without training the one I used is darn good.

Post 6

Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 9:52amSanction this postReply
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GANG,

Thanks for catching the "changed" typo. No, I do not use a voice recognition program. By the way, anything substantive?

Fred

Post 7

Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 11:36amSanction this postReply
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There's a difference between direct literary allusion or imitation as an important purpose and putting a twist on an ancient symbol or metaphor as a nice secondary aspect.

I can see Rand saying to herself: " I need my hero to invent or discover something. Hmmmm, let's see...throughout history writers have used "seeing the light" or the sun as a metaphor for increased knowledge or a better world, for example in the Prometheus myth and in Plato's allegory of the cave. Why don't I put a twist on this by having someone not walk out and see the light but -create- the light himself in the form of the electric-powered lightbulb."

Phil

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Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 11:58amSanction this postReply
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Yes, I could see her doing that much.

Post 9

Saturday, December 10, 2005 - 5:46pmSanction this postReply
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Rodney said:

That should be "chained underground" of course

That was my mistake. I caught it in my printiout but forgot to correct it in the queue. I've fixed it now.

Sorry,

Ethan


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Post 10

Sunday, December 11, 2005 - 12:56amSanction this postReply
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Fred,

Rand was trained in philosophy, so she would have been fairly intimate with this tale. As she used Greek mythology extensively, I see no problem on her taking the shell of a story from Plato and putting her own spin on it as one of her creative elements.

I liked your essay.

Michael

(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 12/11, 12:57am)


Post 11

Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 5:40pmSanction this postReply
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Aww, shucks, Fred, you had me going there, with that eidos/muthos thing.  I looked it up, and did not find it.  I used Perseus.Tufts. edu and I got many instances of both words.  However, in Book VII of The Republic eide (case of eidos) appears twice and neither time as you suggest.

Dang.

I was hoping to be able to re-interpret Plato.   I even printed your essay out on the flipside of Peter Creswell's "Don't Cry for Me Aristotle" which also suggested a reinterpretation of the original texts.

Oh, well, perhaps I can salvage something from this.  I will get the Loeb Classics edition of The Republic and sit down with it when the time comes.


Post 12

Saturday, December 17, 2005 - 8:49pmSanction this postReply
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Michael,
Aww, shucks, Fred, you had me going there, with that eidos/muthos thing. I looked it up, and did not find it.

Aww, shucks, Michael, you misquote me. I did not say "eidos/muthos" but rather "eikos/muthos"

Let me quote myself;

I also replaced “myth” with “image” following Bloom—Glaucon uses the word “eikos” in this section but never “muthos.”

As you no doubt know this is a world of difference between eidos = Form (among other translations) and eikos. It comes from eikon = image or likeness. (Liddell and Scott) At 514a1 Plato uses "apeikason" which means "to form from a model or image. At 515a1 he uses "eikos" and both Shorey in the Loeb and Bloom translate this as "image."

Hope that helps.

Fred


Post 13

Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - 8:19amSanction this postReply
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I notice further points of continuity and difference between the Anthem story and the allegory of the cave in Republic. Firstly, I underscore one of Fred’s change from the Binswanger/student summary of the cave allegory. The individual in Plato’s story—who is unfettered, turned around, and dragged to see more of reality in the cave, see light coming into the cave entrance, then see the world above ground and eventually the sun illuminating the world—is not killed. Rather, closer to Fred’s sketch, Plato's Socrates proposes only that those fettered fellows would kill the enlightened one, were they able and were he to try to free them and drag them upward. Rand’s protagonist Equality 7-2521 likewise is not killed, and when he first confronts the powers in his native, collectivist and technologically stagnant society, they want to kill him and would do so but for his escape.

The sun that Plato/Socrates would have one freed from the cave bondage come to see is analogue of the Good. Rand was not aiming in Anthem for Equality to come to see the Good, and as Binswanger indicated, unlike Plato, she was not out to turn sight away from the visible realm. She crafted her story of Equality for him to come to see the ego, the I, his independent individual mind, and its importance for knowing reality. What Equality has learned in the tunnel fits the stage of what Socrates’ unfettered prisoner has learned after being turned around in the cave, before ascending to the world and sun above. Equality tries to inform and free his fellow citizens at this premature stage.

It is later, during the time Equality is living in the modern house from the ancient times, where he is learning their knowledge from their books, that he realizes the word I and its meaning. Again he wants to enlighten and free men still in the dark in his native society, and this is parallel, though with largely opposite specific intent, the Plato/Socrates story in which persons—brought through much education to the sweet life of the intellect and realization of the Good—will, or anyway should, return to stirring things up (and issuing edicts) among those chained to the visible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Republic in The Fountainhead, here.


(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 1/01, 8:56am)


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