Meditations: Vol. 1, Issue 8
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In this issue:
- Podcast #7: Dr. Gary Gregg on "Of Poets and the Afterlife: Imagining Your Life Choices" in Plato's Republic
- SBS Student Research: David Weart and Jeff Jennings, SBS 2018, on "Seminar Helps Set Tune for Army's Future"
- Book Recommendation: James R. Sharp's American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis recommended by Dr. Daniel Krebs
- Video of the Month: Peter Zeihan on "The New President and the World: Challenges and Opportunities"
- BONUS/FINAL Reading Assignment: Target 8 (due June 15)
And here we are at the end of all things--or at least at the end of The Republic! In this episode of “Thinking with Plato” we talk about the importance of imagination and literature (“poetry,” Plato calls it) before traveling with Er into the afterlife to look at the fate of the human soul after death. It’s a perplexing ending for a book that started out trying to understand justice and became an exploration of politics and communal life. Here, as you will see, Plato was, in part, attempting to “correct” the moral teachings he finds in Homer, the great instructor for Greek culture.
Though this is the end of The Republic, it is not the end of our time together. We have one more episode left in Season One--a look at Plato’s impact on human history through the lens provided by Arthur Herman’s incredible survey, The Cave and the Light. For that final installment, you don’t necessarily need to have Herman’s book, but I do very highly suggest it, particularly the audiobook, if you don’t have the time to invest in that rather large book.
Elsewhere in this edition, you will find Dr. Daniel Krebs recommending James R. Sharp's American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis. And, you will find the very exciting contribution from Capt. Jeff Jennings and Maj. David Weart about their time at our SBS. We encourage you to reach out and tell the story of your experience with SBS in any ways you can. It is only through your efforts that the good word can be shared around the wider Army community. I just spoke at Fort Lewis-McChord and don’t think many of the top leadership there had even heard of these programs, so there is work to be done! You will also find a video of one of our most widely viewed lectures, a talk by geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan on "The New President and the World: Challenges and Opportunities."
As we head into the end of this experiment, we could really use your feedback to help us plan our future. Are you using Meditations? Do you have suggestions for improving it? Are you ready to start another year and another book? Is there something we can do to help share this offering with a wider community in the Army? We value having your feedback and continued partnership in our common efforts.
Dr. Gary L. Gregg, II
McConnell Center Director
{PODCAST: Target 7}
In this episode, Dr. Gary Gregg guides listeners through the final book of The Republic. He discusses the conflict between poetry and philosophy and why Plato spends a significant amount of time criticizing the poets, Homer in particular. We are reminded of the tripartite soul and are challenged to consider how the types of entertainment we consume can corrupt the order of one’s soul over time. Gregg then examines the “Myth of Er,” Plato’s imaginative story of one man’s travels through the afterlife, and concludes with his thoughts on why Plato chose to end The Republic with this imaginative tale and what it may mean for us today.
{SBS Student Commentary}
Jeff Jennings & David Weart (SBS 2018) on "Seminar Helps Set Tune for Army's Future"
...The Strategic Broadening Seminar is a different sort of musical academy. We arrived expecting to become a better musician—to learn new songs, or more efficient ways to play the songs we already knew. That, however, is not the vision of Gary Gregg, lead faculty for the seminar and director of the McConnell Center. In the first hours of our time at the seminar, Gregg told us that he would aim not only to make us better military leaders, but to make us better people as well. This was unexpected. Put another way, Gregg did not endeavor to teach us another piece of music, but to introduce us to the foundational principles of music itself. He would work with us on the modes—the language of it all. {Read more}
{Bookshelf Recommendation}
The Frailty of the United States
James R. Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
This immensely readable book focuses on the 1790s in U.S. politics, the decade after the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution until the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency in 1800. Many historians, and a wider American public, have generally treated the U.S. Constitution and its political system as a fact, established firmly through the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 and 1788, and the inauguration of George Washington as first president of the United States in 1789.
Not so James R. Sharp. His book shows the incredible frailty of the U.S. as a political construct during the first decade of its existence. In fact, Sharp argues, the U.S. nearly broke apart multiple times in violent civil war during these first ten years.
For Sharp, the U.S. Constitution was “almost fatally flawed at its inception” (2). The founding document had given citizens considerable protection from potential abuses of power by the state, but it provided no mechanism for resolving political conflict between diverging interests. The founders, as Sharp explains, had unrealistically placed too much trust in “expectations of civic harmony, selfless behavior, and consensus upon a national public good” (3).
When two “proto-parties” (8) – Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans and Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists – emerged after 1789, primarily over sectional issues, neither group accepted the other side as legitimate opposition (i.e. different interests and goals but still loyal to the United States). Both sides were convinced that the other side, once in power, would inevitably lead the country into catastrophe. Both sides thus sought to vanquish the other side completely to save the achievements of the revolution – and both sides nearly destroyed the United States in the process.
– Dr. Daniel Krebs, UofL History Professor
EDITOR'S NOTE: If founding era politics are of interest, please check out our McConnell Center debate series on the MVP of the American Founding. This particular debate considers the merits of Thomas Jefferson vs. Alexander Hamilton. - GGJ
{Next Reading Assignment}
Target 8: Due June 15
(Selections from Arthur Herman's The Cave and the Light)
{Worth the Watch}
Peter Zeihan, a strategist on global affairs and geopolitics, argues that the U.S. will become great again—more by luck than by design—under any new presidential administration. What are the keys to American success? What will America’s role in the world become?
