Re: Bernard Knox had a more impressive life than you will have had

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Incidentally, I think it is very rude of google to claim that it has not found a term in a book, when really, it simply has not permission to show you the page on which the term appears; this led me to believe that I might have been mistaken in thinking that Williams talks about anoxia and blue finger-nails in his Descartes book at all. It doesn't help, granted, that I actually searched for "hypoxia" rather than "anoxia", but the book search also didn't give the desired result for "pilot", showing me only something from very early in the book in reference to Descartes' own comment on souls, bodies, pilots, and ships (the former former not being in the former latter as the latter former is in the latter latter). I think that but for its actual meaning "Hypoxia" could make for a nice name, paired, for instance, with "Hypatia".


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:02 PM
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I love this, neb. I think it speaks to the character, nobility of spirit, really, of *all* classicists.
Jean-Pierre Vernant was a bad-ass leader of the FFI, too.


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:08 PM
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Did you know that the movie Agora was called that rather than 'Hypatia' because the director thought that 'Hypatia' was an unattractive name? At least that's the story. I find it a little hard to believe.


Posted by: beamish | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:09 PM
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I think it speaks to the character, nobility of spirit, really, of *all* classicists.

kalos kagathos, amirite?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:11 PM
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The title of the OP leaves little more to be said on the subject, really.

However, just for the hell of it I will quibble with your application of "kalos kagathos", which was IIRC, a description applied to themselves by the "premature fascists" of the oligarchic tendency in Athens.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:22 PM
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Surely at some point someone will post a list of all the classicists who were fascists (presumably of varying degrees of maturity). Not me, though, as I know little of such things.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:30 PM
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I would like to be able to claim that its use in 4 was a mocking rejoinder, made in knowledge of what is pointed out in 5, to oudemia's invocation of the aristocratic virtue of nobility in 3, but that would not at all be true.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:31 PM
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There was a sort of interesting article I read somewhere sometime about British and American and German classicists being used as spies in WWII Greece. Basically a lot of them got sent there (or were there already) and some proved better at it than others, but it was all highly intrigue-driven and exotic. Wow what an awesome memory I have.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:38 PM
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3: "Hypatia" is a moderately unattractive name if you don't have the backstory. It sounds a little like a planet from a sci-fi B-movie. Not a good title. "Agora" is much more euphonious. If the point is to get asses in seats you're much better off with the latter than the former as the marginal ass is an ignoramus.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:51 PM
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I should probably find out something about Hypatia other than killed by being pelted with potsherds and once threw a menstrual rag at an admirer. I know she was a philosopher, but I've never seen anything about what she actually said or wrote on the subject.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:53 PM
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6:Well, I just finished the section in Dower about the British and American Occupation Japanophiles fighting to retain the Emperor when the Japanese mostly didn't give a shit. Mostly tatamae for Japanese.

But that isn't about white europeans.

Strauss.

Hermann Broch


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 12:55 PM
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"tatemae" sorry


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:01 PM
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Leo may not have been a classicist but his daughter Jenny sure is.


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:02 PM
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There's a certain generation of academic riddled with that sort of general bad-assery. I was taught by a guy who had been a spy of some sort, although I think that was post-WWII and via the Joint Services School.* Williams _was_ a fighter pilot but it was after WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Services_School_for_Linguists


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:05 PM
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I should probably find out something about Hypatia other than killed by being pelted with potsherds and once threw a menstrual rag at an admirer. I know she was a philosopher, but I've never seen anything about what she actually said or wrote on the subject.

None of her writings survive. We have stories and letters addressed to her. Given the writings that are attributed to her (commentaries on Diophantus, Euclid, and Ptolemy), she's likely to have been at least as much of a mathematician and astronomer as a philosopher.


Posted by: beamish | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:06 PM
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6 Find a list of the Classics faculty at any German university c. 1939, start posting names, and you can be reasonably confident that the majority were fascists. Same goes for any field.


Posted by: teraz kurwa my | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:06 PM
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This reminds me of one great Wikipedia entry.

Some highlights:
"Joad was also interested in the supernatural and partnered Harry Price on a number of ghost-hunting expeditions, also joining the Ghost Club of which Price became the president. He involved himself in psychical research, traveling to the Harz Mountains to help Price to test whether the 'Bloksberg Tryst' would turn a male goat into a handsome prince at the behest of a maiden pure in heart (it did not)"

"He wrote letters and articles in protest of the decisions being made to increase Britain's wealth and status, as he believed the short term status would bring long term problems. He organized rambles and rode recklessly through the countryside."

""In April 1948, Joad was convicted of travelling on a Waterloo-Exeter train without a valid ticket. Although he was a frequent fare dodger, he failed to give a satisfactory excuse. This made front-page headlines in the national newspapers, and the fine of £2 (£54 as of 2012) destroyed all hopes of a peerage and resulted in his dismissal from the BBC."

"He believed that female minds lacked objectivity, and he had no interest in talking to women who would not go to bed with him."

"Job interviews proved a great difficulty for Joad. He was very flippant and was disapproved of by many."

"Although there was opposition from Conservatives who complained about the political bias, the general public generally considered him the greatest British philosopher of the day. He had won the position of celebrity."

And a passage that really runs the gamut:
"In his early life, Joad very much shared the desire for the destruction of the Capitalist system. He was expelled from the Fabian Society in 1925 because of sexual misbehaviour at its summer school, and did not rejoin until 1943. In 1931, disenchanted with Labour in office, Joad became Director of Propaganda for the New Party. Owing to the rise of Oswald Mosley's Pro-Fascist sympathies, Joad resigned, along with John Strachey. Soon after he became bitterly opposed to Nazism, but he continued to refuse military service. Joad gave his support to many pacifist organizations."


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:06 PM
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I should probably find out something about Hypatia other than killed by being pelted with potsherds

Abalone shells, wasn't it?


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:13 PM
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Or oyster shells?


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:18 PM
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Here is what I was specifically googling for, and sumgun, found it at DeLong (quoting Horton on Mansfield on Strauss)

Tu regere imperio... parcere subjectis et debellare superbos

I looked at a book about Rome and the Nazis during the 20s. Maybe someday, but doubtful.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:23 PM
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19: I thought it was oyster.
20: Bob is quoting Zombie Anchises!


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:26 PM
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"Agora" may be more euphonious than "Hypatia", but to people of my generation the word is inevitably redolent of this stuff, which, contrary to the publicity, isn't at all pleasant tasting and was the bane of my childhood.

Oyster shells was what they told me. Can you even get abalone in Alexandria?


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:28 PM
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I've just been reading The Swerve, which described the event as 'many proceeded to strip the flesh from her bones using broken pottery.'

Wiki answers:

The Christian monks stripped her naked and dragged her through the streets to the newly Christianised Caesareum church, where she was brutally killed. Some reports suggest she was flayed with ostrakois (literally, "oyster shells", though also used to refer to sharp roof tiles or broken pottery) and set ablaze while still alive, though other accounts suggest those actions happened after her death.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:34 PM
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(The link in 23 gives 3 accounts.)


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:39 PM
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It is very politic of the thread not to speculate on the relative wussiness of contemporary academics, but, you know, come on.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:40 PM
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Ostrakos as broken pottery is certainly widespread usage, as in "ostracise", but oyster shells are sharper, if they're to hand.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 1:42 PM
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27

This is fairly recent and relevant. Haven't yet read it but have heard good things.


Posted by: potchkeh | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 3:18 PM
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27: Ooooh! Thanks, p!


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 3:19 PM
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(Man, the guy who blurbs it is a Wack. O. however. Neither here nor there.)


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 3:21 PM
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Werner Jaeger came to the U.S., because he read Mein Kampf knew that Hitler was serious and that he, as a Jew, needed to leave. He was a Professor at the University of Berlin when he emigrated. I'm too ignorant to know what Hitler's job was then, but he's the one who signed the papers granting Jaeger permission to leave.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 5:15 PM
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Oh, I'm going to have to look up 27.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 5:18 PM
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8: I vaguely remember reading that too. Possibly in the LRB or something like that.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 5:24 PM
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Somebody mention Milman Parry!


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 7:19 PM
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OP Link #2: I had parachuted, in uniform, behind the Allied lines in Brittany to arm and organize French Resistance forces

Is this some idiosyncratic British English usage of "behind" in reference to battle lines? I am only familiar with the standard US usage where "behind" is used to denote being in front of your own lines, that is, on the other side of the enemy's lines from your own forces' lines. Pretty sure I've read this essay before and didn't notice that discrepancy, is it just a typo?


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 7:43 PM
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10: The blog Armarium Magnum has as its most-linked entry a lengthy discussion of what's wrong with the movie together with much of what we know about the politics of Alexandria at the time. More insightful, I think, than wikipedia will be.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 8:25 PM
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34: No, I think it is consistent with the "standard US usage". The French Resistance were still in German-held territory.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 8:32 PM
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36: Right, but I've only ever heard parachuting into enemy-held territory as 'behind enemy lines'. This would be the exact opposite.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 9:29 PM
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Yeah, I thought that was confusing too. Surely he should have said he parachuted ahead of allied lines?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 9:33 PM
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I deferred to his usage in the post, but I thought it was strange.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 9:33 PM
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I think it's just an error and he meant "behind Axis lines" or "behind German lines."


Posted by: Lord Castock | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 9:59 PM
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11: Broch's son married a Japanese woman, and apparently The Guiltless was well received in Japan. I recently read a paper on his reception in Japan; it was dull enough that I'm tempted to make a bunch of stuff up. Um, Broch wrote the screenplay for Rashomon, but 80% of the text was cut; he later incorporated it into draft 4 of The Spell. Kurosawa acknowledged The Death of Virgil as a major inspiration for Hidden Fortress, which means that Broch was indirectly responsible for the Star Wars trilogy, a fact that killed Theodor Adorno nearly a decade in advance. Yukio Mishima was the Hermann Broch of Japan; there's a plaque commemorating this in Osaka. Broch only went to Japan once in his life, however, after the war, with Elias Canetti, who got so freaked out by the crowds in Tokyo that he climbed a tree (a keyaki!) and would not come down for a full day, during which he wrote bitter personal reminiscences of Iris Murdoch in a poorly digested version of hiragana, until Broch (a nice guy who never understood misogyny) convinced him that he was becoming a grim parody of his character Professor Kien, and this just vexed Canetti. They later agreed to pretend it had never happened.


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 10:04 PM
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37-40: Oops, right.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 10:13 PM
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You could all watch this somewhat bizarre movie starring Rachel Weisz as Hyatia to learn more.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 03-22-12 10:34 PM
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||

Let me see, where might these go

Jesse Taylor on "A young black man being late"

Richard Seymour on E P Thompson, fucking liberals, and the fucking law.

So it is that the grammar of abstract, formally equal legal subjects 'congeals' violence and domination, and the main forms of violence are of course class violence. It is not that law's promise of equality simply can't be realised in the capitalist mode of production, but rather that this formal equality is the language that class domination under capitalism must speak in.
...read this again

sub "racist violence" if it suits you, Seymour sees them as very related, to understate.

Not positive, but I think Seymour is writing a book on institutional race relations in Post-WWII America, and has had a series of excellent posts/bookpreviews with terrific insights lately.

|>


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03-23-12 6:48 AM
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There was a sort of interesting article I read somewhere sometime about British and American and German classicists being used as spies in WWII Greece.

About the only funny bit in "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" is the British SOE officer, Bunny Warren, who is sent to the island on the grounds that he speaks fluent Greek. Of course, it's fluent Classical Greek, which is represented as Chaucerian English...


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 03-24-12 6:50 AM
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