George W. Bush is quoted in today's Strib. America's enemies " never stop thinking of new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." This echoes a letter from Michael Faraday, written during a trip to Rome as a servant/assistant to Humphrey Davy: "Knowledge of the world of men, of manners, of books and languages: things in themselves valuable above all price. but which every day shews me prostituted to the basest purposes. Alas, how degrading it is to be learned when it places us on a level with rogues and scoundrels. How disgusting, when it serves but to shew us the artifices and deceit all around." (The Philosopher's Tree ed. by Day, p. 60)
A recent Atlantic article describing the contents of an Al Quaida computer suggests that the terrorists get substantial inspiration from the public ruminations of the counter-terrorism experts. ('Aerosol in the subways; why didn't we think of that?')
One way of reading Plato: he is looking for things to think about that only improve the thinker, for lines of thought that cannot be prostituted. He is looking for a way to keep counter-terrorists from doing the terrorists' homework for them. He is looking for some deep difference between wise people and crafty, erudite, wicked people.
Posted by shea0017 at August 30, 2004 10:42 AM