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Eric Brown

@sophisteuein.bsky.social

1.7K followers 1.3K following 1.7K posts

I teach philosophy, mostly ancient Greek philosophy, at Washington University in St. Louis. I’m here for the zeitgeist.

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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · Nov 22

As an undeserved break from grading, I made a starter pack. I've no doubt made lots of mistakes, and I hope you'll help me correct them. But I also hope it's helpful to some people who are interested in ancient Greek philosophy.

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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 10h

Bryce Harper "Clown Question"

YouTube video by Harold Hub

youtu.be

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 1d

Also good is the principle that labeling a thesis that gets referred to or used only a couple of times adds memory load gratuitously, for one could simply restate the thesis each time. (Some papers have too many named theses, which undercuts the advantage of naming theses!)

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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 1d

Justice is a natural virtue and has a certain scope, but it includes the requirement to abide by norms of cooperation in society, and this opens up questions about what the content of those norms can and should be.

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 1d

The Stoic question would be, should the agreed-upon norms of cooperation extend protection to those who cannot cooperate or even agree to the norms? The answer could be yes, for those beings that we, who agree, could become. We want to protect ourselves and loved ones.

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 1d

which is crucial to establish agreed-upon terms of cooperation, the norms governing social life. There can be no fellowship with nonhuman animals constituted by articulated norms of social life. So there is no justice of equality with them.

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 1d

‘Reasoning’ isn’t quite right. Chrysippus attributed a deduction to a dog! What nonhuman animals lack is the reason that is constituted by concepts in virtue of which mental impressions have articulable content. It’s the ability to articulate how things are…

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 3d

Yes, but it’s crowded in there, with lots of other ballplayers and that’s only a small section of what I spend time thinking about.

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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 4d

But in neither way does the Stoic come close to think that it is intrinsically wrong to cause pain or otherwise harm a nonhuman animal. Of course, Bentham doesn’t either. He thinks it’s fine to cause pain to others so long as it produces enough pleasure. 7/7

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 4d

This Stoicizing revision of Stoicism is suggested by some things said by Philo of Alexandria, who of course recognizes obligations toward farm animals because the Torah mandates them. 6/

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 4d

If our obligations of justice are predicated on the possibility of cooperation in living well, given our shared rational nature, then why not think that we have some obligations of nature with (putatively) non-rational animals with whom we cooperate to live well? 5/

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 4d

Second, a Stoic might think that one takes on obligations toward a nonhuman animal by taking it on as a cooperative partner, as one does a domesticated animal on a farm. This is a revision of their express view, but a plausible extension of things they say. 4/

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 4d

Of course, even if some Stoic did think such a thing, they’d be likely to add that our obligation not to wrong a person by harming an animal the person cares about depends on the person’s care being reasonable. 3/

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 4d

First, if some human happens to care about the animal, the Stoics might admit that it is possible to wrong the person who cares by harming that animal. Such a harm might be be analogous to the injustice of theft. 2/

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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 4d

The Stoics think that we cannot treat nonhuman animals unjustly. For them, the life of a spider is no concern at all. But I can imagine two ways for a Stoic to recognize some obligations not to harm a nonhuman animal. 1/

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 4d

One of Grover Cleveland’s granddaughters was an excellent philosopher.

Fortuna Desperata @fortunadesperata.bsky.social · 5d

On this day, 3rd October, Philippa Foot was born (1920) and died (2010). The blue plaque on 15 Walton Street, Oxford, records

PHILIPPA FOOT
1920-2010
Moral Philosopher
Lived here
1972-2010

It was placed there in 2023 by the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board www.oxonblueplaques.org.uk/plaques/foot...

Woman standing at a street corner looking at a house, at the end of a row of three storey, maybe early 19th century, English town houses in red brick with white painted stucco on the ground floor front. A hedge with trees behind screens most of the row, but not the end house, which bears a plaque to Philippa Foot, philosopher, who lived here.

Reposted by Eric Brown

Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 7d

You'll be shocked to learn New College of Florida is on the brink of implosion just a couple of years after DeSantis engineered an extreme right-wing takeover

Fun fact: NCF's new overlords spend $134K per student (!!...the average at other FL publics is $10K) www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...

Spending Soars, Rankings Fall at New College of Florida

Student outcomes and rankings are slipping at the liberal arts college while spending is up. Critics believe the college is at risk of implosion, and some are calling for privatization.

www.insidehighered.com

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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 5d

I would’ve thought that the semantic value of a personal name is divorced from its etymology. So I wouldn’t translate the names. It’d be like insisting on calling a Greg “Woke.”

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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 5d

Socrates is the most obvious. Gorgias and Protagoras and Parmenides are there because of their importance, too, not for their names. Alcibiades and Critias.

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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 5d

Insofar as class is about cultural practices and signifiers and attachments, it makes sense that we retain at least some of those that we grew up with, even if we end up with a different SES. For some folks, what they retain includes their political allegiances, or class consciousness.

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 6d

And it doesn’t really get better when you are smoked in two straight.

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 6d

Since (nearly) all the characters were real people, we cannot say Plato made up the names. We could say he chose the real people as characters because of their names, but that seems a stretch in most cases and obviously false in some.

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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 8d

As a lifelong fan, I’d rather see the Reds in the playoffs than not, but the new expanded playoffs are still a sad joke. The regular season is the best barometer of success, and it is not a good year when you win only 83 games.

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 8d

The obvious tell is that they say there used to be THREE teams in New York.

Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 9d

That’s Bob Audi, in a sketch by Bob Gordon, on an old-school t-shirt I saw at a lovely celebration of the latter Bob’s life yesterday.

A folded beige t-shirt with the title “Where’s the Action?” In red gothic lettering arched over a sketch of a naked, balding man with glasses, drawn in the style of old anatomical textbooks. The man is on one knee and reaching down with his left hand to his left foot, which is near a fire. Beneath the sketch are the words “NEH Seminar on Human Action” and “U of Nebraska Summer 1984.”

Reposted by Eric Brown

Dorsa Amir @dorsaamir.bsky.social · 9d

While this looks like it could have been painted yesterday, it’s actually a 1,700 year old (!) portrait from a Fayum mummy in modern day Egypt. This is one of ~900 of these portraits from the era, which broke from a more stylized tradition, and represented the subject more naturally.

A naturalistic portrait of a woman’s face from a Fayum mummy

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