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Fw: Pnin as featherless biped?
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Bellino" <iambe@javanet.com>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (20
lines) ------------------
> Actually, the "featherless biped" story is told about Plato, in Diogenes
> Laertius (vi.40; Diogenes L. is a veritable treasure-house of mendacious
> anecdote about ancient philosophers). It makes Mr. Selleck's suggestion
> more intriguing, though, because VN may have been interested in Plato
> but was almost certainly not interested in Aristotle. Diogenes Laertius
> tells the story in his life of Diogenes the Cynic; the point of the
> story is that Diogenes attempted to disprove Plato's definition by
> producing a plucked chicken and saying "Here is Plato's man"; Plato
> didn't rise to the bait, but simply revised his definition by adding
> "with broad flat nails." (A lot of these marginal stories portray Plato
> as being much more like Aristotle, or the sophists, than we're
> accustomed to think.) If VN knew this story, which has a pretty broad
> currency even outside the small circle of fans of Diogenes L., I suspect
> its appeal for him would have been the idea that it's impossible to
> devise a reductive "scientific" definition of something as wondrous as
> man, as complex as, for example, Pnin. It fits pretty well with the
> themes of the novel.
>
> Mary Bellino
> iambe@javanet.com
From: "Mary Bellino" <iambe@javanet.com>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (20
lines) ------------------
> Actually, the "featherless biped" story is told about Plato, in Diogenes
> Laertius (vi.40; Diogenes L. is a veritable treasure-house of mendacious
> anecdote about ancient philosophers). It makes Mr. Selleck's suggestion
> more intriguing, though, because VN may have been interested in Plato
> but was almost certainly not interested in Aristotle. Diogenes Laertius
> tells the story in his life of Diogenes the Cynic; the point of the
> story is that Diogenes attempted to disprove Plato's definition by
> producing a plucked chicken and saying "Here is Plato's man"; Plato
> didn't rise to the bait, but simply revised his definition by adding
> "with broad flat nails." (A lot of these marginal stories portray Plato
> as being much more like Aristotle, or the sophists, than we're
> accustomed to think.) If VN knew this story, which has a pretty broad
> currency even outside the small circle of fans of Diogenes L., I suspect
> its appeal for him would have been the idea that it's impossible to
> devise a reductive "scientific" definition of something as wondrous as
> man, as complex as, for example, Pnin. It fits pretty well with the
> themes of the novel.
>
> Mary Bellino
> iambe@javanet.com