Meditations: Vol. 1, Issue 7
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In this issue:
- Podcast #6: Dr. Gary Gregg on "The Tyrannical Soul & Caring for the Proper Soul" in Plato's Republic
- SBS Student Research: Lee Torres, SBS 2018, on "The Constitution and War"
- Book Recommendation: J. Glenn Gray's The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle recommended by Dr. Rouven Steeves
- Video of the Month: Dr. Bill Allison (Georgia Southern University) on "The American Soldier in Vietnam"
- Next Reading Assignment: Target 7 (due May 15)
In this installment of Meditations, we will return to the concept of the tripartite soul that Plato provided earlier in the text. This time, though, he gives us yet another and more complicated image to remember it by and to think about further. In the end, he calls on us to be proper gardeners of our souls--weeding out the negative desires and passions and nurturing the good. We also dive deeper into the origins of the tyrannical soul and are called upon to consider if we ourselves might suffer from it. After this, you only have one more book to go so stick with it!
Elsewhere in this edition you will find Lt. Colonel Rouven Steeve’s admonition to read J. Glenn Gray’s The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle and our friend Lee Torres’ (SBS 2018) meditation on war powers as envisioned by our Founding Fathers and as they have played out in regards to the AUMF that has guided our wars since 2001. You will also find a pretty fascinating video of Dr. Bill Allison discussing the experience of American soldiers during the Vietnam War.
I hope you enjoy and are edified by this edition of Meditations and urge you to keep focused on the goals ahead.
Dr. Gary L. Gregg
McConnell Center Director
{PODCAST: Target 6}
After considering the other types of governments and individuals in last month’s installment, Dr. Gary Gregg takes a deeper dive into Plato’s outline of the mind and government of the tyrant. Gregg then discusses the new image Plato provides of the human soul in Book IX and concludes by considering Plato’s guidance for the proper cultivation of one’s soul.
{SBS Student Research}
Lee Torres (SBS 2018) on "The Constitution and War"
...There have been multiple attempts to bring up a motion to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force, while others have tried to introduce a new bill that would limit the implementation of military intervention. The scope of this paper will not argue for war powers to belong to either the Legislature or Executive branch but rather presents facts that have been evident with both 2001 and 2002 AUMF. In truth, what we see through such comparison and discussion is the Founding Fathers’ vision of the deliberate dialogue between co-equal branches of government. {Read more}
{Bookshelf Recommendation}
A Classic on What It Means to Be a Soldier
There are arguably two books every American citizen should read to understand our unique experiment in republican government: Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and The Federalist Papers. Similarly, there are arguably two books every American soldier should read: Dave Grossman’s On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society and J. Glenn Gray’s The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle. Both books are written by soldiers who have studied the “art of war” (Sun Tzu—another great book well worth reading by soldiers). Of these two (three) books, it is Gray’s The Warriors that I want to particularly draw to your attention, because it is the one book on war that I have read and studied that touches the very marrow of what it means to be a soldier—a warrior.
Gray was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941 and discharged a second lieutenant in 1945. Engaged in counter-espionage and intel in Europe and North Africa, Gray spent many of his post-war years contemplating and studying the meaning of not only his own experiences as a soldier but of soldiers in general. The result of all his labors is The Warriors. It is a philosophically profound examination of the meaning of war and the nature of warriors informed by combat and the effects of combat. Rooted in “ground truths,” it confronts us with the rationale and rationalization of soldiers as they experience combat and try to make sense of it all. As the book’s epigraph by the British parliamentarian and essayist Norman Angell observes, “It is quite in keeping with man’s curious intellectual history that the simplest and most important questions are those he asks least often.” Gray does us a great service by asking precisely such questions, and offering some important insights regarding the possible answers along the way. In my many years of teaching, the book has proven of interest to every serious student confronting the meaning of war first raised in Homer’s Iliad (another work every soldier would do well to read; Alexander the Great died with a copy of it under his pillow). As soldiers, we have a duty to be serious about our profession of arms, and Gray offers us one of the most important examinations thereof.
{Next Reading Assignment}
Target 7: Due May 15
(Book X, pp. 277-303)
{Worth the Watch}
Dr. Bill Allison (Georgia Southern University) discusses what it was like to be in Vietnam—from an infantryman in the jungle to a clerk in Saigon—looking at daily existence in a country truly foreign to the American soldier.
