-that, for example, when I used to teach Plato, a sticking point was always the view that one who does injustice suffers more than the one to whom injustice is done.
In a general way, I can see that if we are able to live well by means of our "soul", and the "soul" is damaged by such action, then we are worse for it.
But, concretely, many bad people seem to go unpunished and don't notice what they've done.
But, then again, on another level, we don't know what goes on with those invisible and distant men behind the curtains of power....
And, if we consider Penner's emphasis upon Socratic conversations,we notice their absence.
The so-called great and powerful avoid answering questions and don't allow people to even ask them honest questions--at any rate, not in public.
One example that springs to mind is the interview a few years ago that Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" had with Bill Clinton. Goodman asked Clinton many questions, and she did not pursue him with follow-up questions---not to the extent one might, not to the extent one should, I would say. Yet, Clinton became angry, and took a "how dare you?" attitude...
Just one example.
Tony Blair would be another....
What lives do such creatures really live? Can you be dishonest in an insular part of your life without it spilling over? It would be quite a risk to take.... trying to practice dishonesty only on Monday, Wed, and Friday or only with this group of people..... "dishonesty"? is that what it is? or, rather cowardice, engaging in a policy of deliberately limiting one's thoughts and, even, feelings, in the service of something which is neither truth nor goodness, nor justice, nor beauty.....not putting one's self in a situation where one might say or think or feel something....
I began by wanting to write about cruelty and injustice, and how I came to believe that the institutions in our world aim at injustice, and that this influences our relationships to one another, and how shocked I was to arrive at the conclusion that an enormity of suffering is unnecessary, the product of specific decisions by specific individuals who aim at something we call their self-interest.
But if they thereby make themselves to have the ugly souls that I have described above, then the world seems even a more perverse place....
I think perhaps Simon Blackburn misunderstands such thoughts as the claim that bad people are "irrational", but that thought is not one I can expand upon or justify right now.
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