Yesterday & Today

I still work part-time at Barnes and Noble (9 hours a week), mostly because I buy so many books that the employee discount really saves me a decent amount of money in the long run, but also because there are times when school is not in session and I can use the extra cash. I've transferred to a much smaller store and I find it far more pleasant to work at then the store at which I spent three years working. At my current location, the customers just arn't assholes like at the other store; moreover, the management isn't in a hurry to kiss each customer's ass.

After I gave a rather mediocre performance on my Latin quiz on Friday, I hopped in my car (which is still running after all these years, notwithstanding my continuous monetary expenditiures for maintainence) an rushed off to work. I was trying to get there at least 15 minutes early so that I could leave 15 minutes early. I needed to leave early because the eminent Plato scholar, Nicholas Smith, was giving a talk at SFSU not more than 30 minutes after I was to be off work; so, I needed to get out of work early to beat the traffic and find parking--I arrived 10 minutes late. That's cool, though, all I missed was Smith's exposition of the traditionalist account of Socrates' moral intellectualism, which with I was already familiar. Smith's talk was entitled "Socrates on How Wrongdoing Damages the Soul." I sat down as Smith began showcasing the inadequacies of the traditional account (such as Vlastos' account ) and how such an account leaves a conceptual gap in explicating Socrates' picture of wrongdoing and how it relates to the damage of the soul. He then, of course, gave his account, one which he and Brickhouse have done some collabrorative work on, to remedy this conceptual gap in the literature regarding this subject. It was an interesting paper, but some of the audience questions afterward were not, as some trailed off into life commentaries (the worst kind), irrelevancies , missing the point confusions (sometimes understandable), and trivialities. But, as those of you know who have gone to enough public academic talks, this is all part of the package.

After the talk, there was a small reception in the SFSU Philosophy Dept. philosophy lounge. I munched on candy bars, soda, and cheese while I waited for Smith to be free from others who were verbally acosting him about the "faults" in his paper, so that I might likewise do the same. Though my question had less to do with finding fault in his argument and more about wanting to hear more of the story about how some of it works. Specifically, he made claims that, in Socrates view, there is no hope for the "ruinous man", the "injuruous soul" such that he could ever recover from his soul damage. The claim is that when one has reached a certain stage of having saturated the soul with evil, that one is no longer capable of deliberating the appropriate means to ends thinking that can lead to moral recovery. I was unclear on Smith's view as to what the exact mechanics for this deliberative dysfunction were; I was also unclear if he was implying that Socrates (as oppossed to Plato) thought the various apetures or compartments of the soul could function deliberatively or if this was metaphorical, or something. I never got a chance to as him, however, because as I walked into the lounge, there was this woman standing all by herself, looking right at me with a smile on her face. She looked vaguely familiar, and I noticed her during the talk because she was taking copious notes like the other Profs., but she wasn't a prof. that I knew. I approached her and she said to me: "You look familiar and I hear you got your BA at UCLA. I did my PhD at UCLA." It was assumed that philosophy was the discipline of study for the both of us, afterall, we were at a philosophy talk. I immediately recognized her after she spoke. What threw me off initially was that she lost the conservative homely look, grew her hair out a bit, and composed herself more assertatively. I was talking to the charming Katherine Dunlop, once a TA for Kaplan's Frege and Russull classes, as well as for Hsu's Skepticism and Rationality class and probably for Lawrence's or Kelsey's 100a Ancient Philosophy classes. She asked me how I'd been, what I'm currently doing and so on. We all (that is, myself, the Big Boy, and little Stevie and others) thought highly of her as a grad student--she really was sharp and had her shit together (she's really cute too). I asked her the similarly and she told me she did her dissertation on Kant's theory of space, that she's on the job market, (and I was told by the SFSU grad advisor that she interviewed at SFSU for a lectureship but had to decline because of scheduling reasons), and has a two year fellowship at Stanford. I think she knows one of my Profs. and that's how she was cued in to my being a UCLA Alum. I enjoyed seeing her and it brought back many wonderful memories while at UCLA. We briefly spoke of how great UCLa was for studying philosophy and she offerred some insights in the UCLa community in contrast to the Standford community--she really enjoyed UCLA as well.

But, that was yesterday, and today is Sat. I worked today. Then I Talked a bit with my buddy Sean, who lives in Pennsylvania with his fiance, Chantal, about how he's studying music and French, and Aikido. then we talked a little about David Lewis' modal semantics and how it relates to truth-bearers in fictional discourse. He mentioned some stuff that Ricour wrote about concerning metaphor that might be along the lines of possible worlds talk, and then also noted I that I might want to look into Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking and maybe his Languages of Art. Chantal, who is also one of my best friends, is finishing up her PhD (and hence her dissertation) at U-Penn (not Penn State). She just got a paper accepted at the Medieval Studies Conference at the University of Leeds, so in July she and Sean will be flying out there for her presentation. Then they are getting married. I composed a classical guitar piece for the two them a while ago, an they have asked me to perform it at their wedding, which I will do, of course (I'l try not to cry like a sentimental little bitch).