Πολιτεία (Politeia)

The Greek word translates into English as Republic.  It is the title of Plato’s well known work, The Republic.  The Greek word comes from the term polis, a description of a commercial, administrative community such as Athens in her heyday, a city-state.  A polis is more sharply defined is the administrative and religious city center, such as the Acropolis of classical Athens.  The word can also indicate a body of citizens.

In his work The Republic, Plato thought that a polis ought to lead to the “common good.”  The optimum form of governance is that of a philosopher-king.  As a philosopher, such a person is acquainted with what is entailed in the “common good.”  The philosopher-king directs the polis as if he were the pilot of a ship.  Plato was not a fan of democracy.  He witnessed the degradation of citizen administration into demagogic anarchy under the pressure of the Peloponnesian War with Sparta (431-405 BCE).

I am into my second reading of an essay about Carl Schmitt (1888-1985).  The essay is entitled, Lawyer for the Strong man, by David Dyzenhaus.  Schmitt was the principal legal advisor to the Nazi regime.  Learning about Schmitt is not an agreeable experience.  There is heightened anxiety as I read.  In the few months that have passed since the dismissal of Trump from the White House by popular election, in the face of his attempt to direct an assault on Congress to overthrow the result of the election, — the brush with strongman rule is close to home.  I intend to review the essay and take notes in the margin.  Later today I will listen to a podcast about the work of Schmitt.  My instinct tells me that we are not through with this craven bid for power.

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I have been thinking about Nietzsche’s assertion in Twilight of the Idols, “Life without music would be a mistake.”  Nietzsche thought that music frees one from ones self, from that obsessive-compulsive fixation upon one’s concerns.  Music, the synchrony of tune and lyric has the power to separate us from our Apollonian individualism, to immerse us in Dionysian sensuality and abandon into the matrix of life from which we came, …and to the All, to which we shall return.  Without music life would be an “exile” from the realm of immortality.   The aphorism is more than a T-shirt slogan.

And now this:  Up On Cripple Creek by The Band

Up On Cripple Creek

By The Band

When I get off of this mountain, you know where I want to go?
Straight down the Mississippi river, to the Gulf of Mexico
To Lake Charles, Louisiana, little Bessie, girl that I once knew
She told me just to come on by, if there’s anything she could do

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don’t have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one

Good luck had just stung me, to the race track I did go
She bet on one horse to win and I bet on another to show
The odds were in my favor, I had ’em five to one
When that nag to win came around the track, sure enough she had won

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don’t have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one

I took up all of my winnings, and I gave my little Bessie half
She tore it up and threw it in my face, just for a laugh
Now there’s one thing in the whole wide world, I sure would like to see
That’s when that little love of mine, dips her doughnut in my tea

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don’t have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one

Now me and my mate were back at the shack, we had Spike Jones on the box
She said, “I can’t take the way he sings, but I love to hear him talk”
Now that just gave my heart a throb, to the bottom of my feet
And I swore as I took another pull, my Bessie can’t be beat

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don’t have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one

Now there’s a flood out in California and up north it’s freezing cold
And this living on the road is getting pretty old
So I guess I’ll call up my big mama, tell her I’ll be rolling in
But you know, deep down, I’m kind of tempted to go and see my Bessie again

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don’t have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one

Lyrics composed by Jaime Robertson