Nickolas Pappas - The Philosophers New Clothes: The Theaetetus, the Academy, and Philosophy’s Turn against Fashion

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The Philosophers New Clothes

This book takes a new approach to the question, Is the philosopher to be seen as universal human being or as eccentric? Through a reading of the Theaetetus, Pappas first considers how we identify philosophers how do they appear, in particular how do they dress? The book moves to modern philosophical treatments of fashion, and of anti-fashion. He argues that aspects of the fashion/anti-fashion debate apply to antiquity, indeed that nudity at the gymnasia was an anti-fashion. Thus anti-fashion provides a way of viewing ancient philosophys orientation toward a social world in which, for all its true existence elsewhere, philosophy also has to live.

Nickolas Pappas is Professor of Philosophy at the City College and the Graduate Center, The City University of New York, USA.

The Philosophers New Clothes

The Theaetetus, the Academy, and Philosophys Turn against Fashion

Nickolas Pappas

First published 2016

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Nickolas Pappas

The right of Nickolas Pappas to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Pappas, Nickolas, 1960-

The philosophers new clothes : the Theaetetus, the academy, and

philosophys turn against fashion / Nickolas Pappas. -- First [edition].

pages cm

1. Plato. Theaetetus. 2. Philosophers. I. Title.

B386.P36 2015

184--dc23

2015021306

ISBN: 978-1-138-92956-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-68113-9 (ebk)

For Barbara

I began what became this book a decade ago, upon being invited to contribute to a philosophers volume on fashion. At the time I was deep in reading about classical antiquity in the belief, which has only grown stronger since, that a proper reception of philosophical works from antiquity called for more familiarity than philosophers possess with the culture that those writings arose in familiarity with the literary culture but also with ancient historical writings and with the daily life that one glimpses through ancient books: the religious experiences, politics, sexual mores, dress, and athletics, down to the food and drink and the containers they came in.

Maybe these are things to look into. When Socrates refers to a shoemaker at his last, does he have someone particular in mind? Why does he compare philosophy to a rainbow?

So Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz asked me to write something for their anthology Fashion Statements when I was thinking about ancient material culture, and the subject of fashion led me to the problem of Greek nudity. You would expect one sine qua non in fashion, that it include clothing; but here were the Greeks, naked in every museum as no one else was in comparably ancient images. It was as if they had found a way to enact the pressures of fashion without a stitch. Would this be worth saying in a conversation about fashion?

From the start it seemed to me that what I had to say about nudity and fashion would have to anchor itself in Plato. His character Pausanias in the Symposium, enunciating what sounds like an Athenian male citizens view of the world, distinguishes Greek from barbarian by three signs: naked exercise, homosexuality, and philosophy. Precisely because this remark had the complacent sound of one devoted to his civilizations assumptions, it seemed to connect nudity to philosophy in the popular mind (insofar as Plato understood that mind).

Thus the topic of fashion focused the question for me of how the philosopher lets himself appear, in ways that this book as a whole is meant to show.

Soon I found the subject of the philosophers appearing in the world intersecting in Platos Theaetetus with references to schools of philosophy, and worries about what becomes of philosophy in school, more such references than in any other Platonic work. Responding to what seemed to me at first like an entirely distinct invitation, the proposal from Burt Hopkins that he and I organize a workshop on the Theaetetus, I saw that that dialogue teemed with points of contact with the tangle of topics that fashion had also led me into.

And once the Theaetetus came to seem unquestionably, to me, a meditation on the philosophers place in the world, I saw the possibility of a book like this one. In a sense I wrote this book to articulate what I had experienced as automatic connections of ideas.

Help in articulating the connections came from all over. Heather Reids comments improved an earlier draft of the book; a special tip of the hat to her. Larissa Bonfantes work, and then conversation with her, took me deep into the question of Greek nudity. Mary Wiseman is too gracious to remember the encouragement she gave this project, but I remember it well. Peter Lamarque published one piece, which later became a chapter of this book, with an enthusiasm that helped me put the other pieces together.

My many conversations with Joseph McElroy and Ken Johnson inform this books argument but also its writing and its sense of itself. And what I have learned about antiquity from Jennifer Roberts appears everywhere.

The City College of New York supported my research with material resources and well-timed releases. I especially want to thank Geraldine Murphy and Eric Weitz, consecutive Deans of Humanities and the Arts at City College, for their gifted leadership and for the specific help and encouragement they gave me. Finally I am pleased to owe two kinds of thanks to John Greenwood, a long-time mentor and ally within the City University but also a fellow philosopher, whose own work came into a pivotal part of this books argument.

Along with the thanks, one regret: Adrienne Mayors excellent new book The Amazons was not available to me until after this one was in production. The reader of The Amazons will see where its chapters on tattoos and trousers would have added to Part II.

Where an author is known for only one work (e.g. Herodotus), that authors abbreviated name is used to refer to that work.

Ael.	Aelian
VH	Varia Historia
Aesch.	Aeschylus
Choeph.	Choephoroi
Eum.	Eumenides
Pers.	Persians
Phin.	Phineas
Supp.	Suppliants
Aeschin.	Aeschines
Ctes.	Against Ctesiphon
Tim.	Against Timarchus

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