in progress; to be revised

The Grouch Reads....badly....

Ostensibly, as an undergraduate during the time of so-called "Communism", I studied Czech.  However, resources were not so ample as they are today....

So, today when I pick up a book treating Czech authors (ranging from classics such as Erben and Nemcova to more contemporary authors and films) from the viewpoint of gender studies, then there's much for me to learn just from a historical perspective......  and I have learned from the book in question.

Nonetheless, I confess I'm not wholly taken by the method of "gender studies".  On the one hand, it's very valuable and insightful to think about Bozena Nemcova as a sort of "feminist", as someone who knew an unhappy marriage, and struggled to support a family with her writing.  And, it's important to learn that she was not well-received on account of her failure to conform.

On the other, there tends to be a lack of serious theory, and much obtrusive use of unexplained quasi-technical terms.  (Examples to appear in the next draft.)

However, I can't excuse the sloppiness when it comes to talk about Plato and what is
"Platonic".

Details to follow, but for now I will just say:  What's called "Platonic" in the book is not what Plato believed.  Alternatively, Plato himself was not "Platonic" ---as the term is used by the author.

The most egregious error, philosophically speaking, is to suggest that Plato might have believed that individuals (like you, me, or Socrates) have "essences"----whether they be "socially constructed" or independent of society/biological, doesn't matter....

Plato's thought was that individuals in space-time have borrowed  identity, owing to their relationship to unchanging abstract objects..... the so-called "Forms".

One need not worry to much about what a Form is to say that, in any case, individuals like that beautiful boy/girl do not have stable identities.  This is very clear in, e.g., the "Symposium"; but there are also relevant thoughts in the "Republic" and "Timaeus".....

I was wondering whether the author had ever bothered to read Plato's "Symposium"......

Of course, Plato was (in some sense) gay or a "homosexual".  However, there needs to be a principle of putting his texts first if we are to be fair to him.

There are exegetical issues here, but I'll hazard a brief remark.  The book I was reading refers in passing to Platonic love of a young boy.   But, whether or not Plato was attracted to young men, what he actually says, the argument he gives, is that if one admires beautiful bodies, then any beautiful body is equally worthy of love, and he suggests that "the beautiful itself' doesn't change in the way that a particular person does.  Now, it is a vexed question what exactly this "beautiful itself" comes to, but
it is very clearly not a specific flesh-and-blood human being.

Again, there are questions raised by saying that.  Does Plato mean we should love an abstract object?  I don't see why it should.  There's a metaphysical point, made by Terry Penner in his writings, that Plato is rejecting nominalism.  And, there's the further point that the nature of love can't be understood unless one brings reference to the "beautiful itself" into one's account.  Many questions should be occurring to any alert reader, and I'm not going to try to deal with them.  However, I am presupposing that there is a notion of "ontological commitment", and that metaphysical questions are legitimate.  I should give further argument, and perhaps if I return to this entry (as promised) I will find more to say.  But, for now, I must stop with an apology, and the admission that I realize more should be said.

Reading last night, I got the idea that this very basic principle of historical scholarship had been violated.

(Why do I say "in some sense"?  Well, I think these things are more complicated than the usual language allows.  I have in mind the complexities introduced by , e.g., Lisa M. Diamond in her "What Does Sexual Orientation Orient?" (link below)
http://www.psych.utah.edu/people/people/diamond/Publications/What%20does%20Sexual%20Orientation%20Orient.pdf

A Gripe:
The dogma (not explained or defended in this book) is that sexual orientation/identity is socially constructed.  I am unhappy with the lack of explanation of the term "construction" or "socially constructed".  Their meaning is not obvious.

The psychologist Paul Bloom once gave a nice example to show that socially constituted does not mean flexible. (And biological does not mean fixed.)  I've only been able to recall half of his example, but it will do for our purposes.  One's attitude toward obesity and how one connects it to beauty is a matter of one's upbringing and society.  We know this because different societies have different ideas.  But it is hard to change.  So, socially constructed does not mean changeable.

I assume here that half the interest in saying gender is constructed by society is because proponents of the view are interested in change.

There is, however, another possibility.  Maybe there are real differences that we don't understand which might help us decide what jobs people can happily and effectively do, but we just don't know enough to specify them.  Nothing here is constructed or conventional, but everything we do is done with very partial knowledge and very great ignorance.