If there is great food made in a microwave, I have never eaten it. Microwave food is hot (in places) and (sometimes) beats no food, but is not eating well. Inquiry can be this way: certainly containing the ingredients of a discussion (words, ideas, people), but lacking the excellence. One can whip up some talk, but the results are not satisfying to anyone who has received a real education.
At the end of Republic Book I, Socrates confesses:
You are the one who provided the feast, Thrasymachus, after you ceased to be angry with me and began to speak gently. Nevertheless-and through no fault of yours-I have not dined well. It strikes me that I have been like a glutton, snatching at one dish after another and eating in such haste that I had no time to savor the food. I am afraid this is the way I have gone about our inquiry. We had not finished defining justice before I was off to examine whether it was the same as wisdom and virtue or ignorance and vice. Then I was unable to resist pursuing another line of inquiry into the comparative profitability of justice and injustice. So I must confess that the out-conic conic of the discussion is that I know nothing. After all, if justice still remains undefined, I can hardly know whether it is in fact a virtue or a vice. Nor can I know whether the just man is in fact happy or miserable.
Socrates has been a glutton, but a particular sort: the hasty glutton. He has also eaten without plan or purpose, no menu, but also quickly.
Haste is part of the problem.
Why?
Socrates describes setting out to define one term (justice) and then pursuing other questions until he was done without ever concentrating on the main course. He could not enjoy the intellectual food he was eating, because he gulped it down.
The only way to enjoy a microwaved meal is quickly. Focus too much on the tray of microwaved portobello mushrooms and beef tips and the not-so-greatness stands out. A microwave meal is made in haste, consumed without much pleasure.
This is fine, all fine, and if fine is all you wish in food, then fine, but surely it is a pity. Almost always, for only a few minutes more, better food is available. Our hunger compels us or so we tell ourselves. Isn’t it more likely (in most cases) that hunger combined with impatience drives us?
“Whatever,” I am tempted to say. “Civilization will not die in discontent with microwaved dinners.”
Perhaps, not.
But civilization cannot flourish without inquiry and that takes care and time. One cannot have a quick inquiry into the nature of justice and then go on to a quick round of Star Trek Timelines.
Why?
To get complex flavors in food requires time, so does complexity in a discussion. If we wish to consume an idea, digest it, make it part of self, then we will have to take time. Digesting a complicated argument requires more time and talent than eating a stew!
Some ideas are complex and in all but a few mind complexity often takes time to clarify. We get the new idea, but only after we focus.
Haste makes intellectual waste.
To grasp the argument takes time, because arguments are best examined in a community. There may be love at first sight, but there iis no great discussion at first sight! We need time to know each other, to gel, to allow our voices to be heard and stilled.
There is no microwave that can heat up friendship to the point that it lasts.
———————————————-
*I begin an informal summer reading of Republic using Scott/Sterling (a new translation for me). Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Part 13. Part 14. Part 15. Part 16. Part 17. Part 18. Part 19. Part 20. Part 21. Part 22. Part 23. Part 24. Part 25. Part 26. Part 27. Part 28. Part 29. Part 30. Part 31. Part 32. Part 33. Part 34. Part 35. Part 36. Part 37. Part 38. Part 39. Part 40. Part 41. Part 42. Part 43. Part 44. Part 45. Part 45.5. Part 46. Part 47. Part 48. Part 49. Part 50. Part 51. Part 52.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In