[lit-ideas] Re: Nussbaum Does It Again
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx, teemu17@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:01:57 -0400
Yost mentions steam rooms and McEvoy c-ontology.
We are discussing the _title_ of Nussbaum's book,
"Love's Knowledge"
I was thinking Greek. Love is complex enough for the Greeks:
1. philos
2. eros
3. agape
I of course think it's eros with philosophy, but I tend in mixed company to say
it's philos. Since Nusbaum is mixed company, I do philos (or philia if you
must).
But then there's the anathema, 'knowledge'.
---
Love’s Knowledge,
Also, shouldn't it be Love's _Wisdom_, which doesn't make sense,
incidentally. "Episteme" sounds so restricting!
-----
So I thought how _that_ would come out in Greek. Obviously, Nussbaum is doing
it again and trying to be clever. The book would just as well be entitled,
"Philosophy", but she wanted, as I say to be clever, so it has the 'inversio'
figure of speech: instead of philosophia being the philia of sophia, it becomes
the sophia of philia. But what irritates me is that it's not the _eros_ for
_wisdom_ (or Sophia, if you must -- not in vain it was a popular girl's name
for the Byzantines) but the _knowledge_ of 'eros'??????
Genitives, as in "Love's" are usually tricky, as Geary knows. Subjective,
objective? If we don't do abstract notions,
the idea is that we have a LOVING agent, and a KNOWING agent. This is the
KNOWING activity by a LOVING agent, i.e. LOVING agency ("Love") itself.
This is a far cry from Philosophy, which was coined as a mere desire or
appreciation of sophia where you found it.
There is _no_ knowledge of love, and there is no way a _love_ for 'knowledge'
rather than _wisdom_ be made into an imperative.
"Know" is a typical English construction, unknown in even the Germanic
languages who would use 'kennen' (for 'can') and 'weissen', cognate with
'wise', 'wisdom'. So Nussbaum, who's done Greek and Latin, should do a bit of
Germanic philology, too.
"Know" possibly occurs in Old High German ("knoweren"). But I'm sure if you say
"knoweren lieben" in Hamburg, they'll think you want to f*ck* a prostitute
("Adam knew Eve"), "Liebling" = sweetheart = tart.
JL
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