Microfiction: On swarms of family likenesses

This week, more microfiction was created by the brilliant minds of my students, and I would not in a million years wish to deprive you of reading them.

As last time, I gave them two options:

In 10 words or fewer, write down what Wittgenstein means by 'family resemblance'.

OR

In 10 words or fewer, write down Socrates's criticism of Meno's attempt at defining virtue.

In order to orient those readers unfamiliar with Wittgenstein's work or with Plato's Meno, perhaps the following will help:

With regard to Wittgenstein, the following passage from The Blue and Brown Books (published by Blackwell) was central to our discussion on 'family resemblance' or 'family likenesses':

'This craving for generality is the resultant of a number of tendencies connected with particular philosophical confusions. There is :

(a) The tendency to look for something in common to all the entities which we commonly subsume under a general term.--We are inclined to think that there must be something in common to all games, say, and that this common property is the justification for applying the general term "game" to the various games; whereas games form a family the members of which have family likenesses. Some of them have the same nose, others the same eyebrows and others again the same way of walking; and these likenesses overlap.' (p.17)

In complete opposition to this, Socrates insist in the Meno that Meno provide him with a definition of virtue, tell him what virtue is rather than give him a list of particular virtues, which he compares to 'a swarm' (72a). He then goes on:

'But, Meno, following up this image about swarms, if after you had been asked by me about the very being of a bee, just what it is, and you were saying that there are many and of all sorts, what would you answer me if I asked you: "Then are you saying that they are many and of all sorts and different from one another in this by which they are bees? Or that it is not this in which they differ, but in something else, such as beauty or size or something else of this sort?"' (72a-b)

Meno can of course only agree that bees do not differ from each other in that by which they are bees. And this is when Socrates once again makes his request clear:

'And so too, surely about the virtues: even if they are many and of all sorts, still they all have some one and the same form through which they are virtues'. (72c)

What Socrates wants we defined as intension: the meaning of the concept. What Meno keeps providing is the extension of 'virtue': those examples of virtue that the concept covers, a list of particular virtues.

With this background, I hope everyone can make sense of the following phrases, which I have sorted by subject matter:

On family resemblance:

"'Overlapping' similarities: features between family members is family resemblance."

"How the common characteristics of each family member overlap."

"Characteristics can be shared by a few, and by many."

"Family members with family likeness, Wittgenstein's equation; family resemblance."

"Overlapping with every member in the family."

"A bucket of noses and ears shared by kin."

On Socrates's criticism of Meno:

"Extensive. Undefined list."

"Meno is using extension, rather than intension for virtue."

"Requires universal form of virtue that makes examples successful."

"A hollow definition masted(?) by example."

"Meno's definition explains the extent of virtue, not the intension."

"Swarms of nonsense, get to the intension of virtue."

While all these phrases show imagination and effort, I need to make a comment about those on Wittgenstein's notion of 'family resemblance'. While we did discuss how family members share features with each other while not all having one and the same feature which could be considered a common characteristic, the value of Wittgenstein's thought there does nog lie in his insight into the intricacies of human biology and genetics. Thinking through how family members relate to each other was merely a step in getting to an understanding of the philosophical idea. It was this philosophical idea, rather then the preparatory thought, that I was inviting my students to explore through microfiction. I suppose this means that, in the future, I should be more clear about what I want from them.

Microfiction on Socrates

In order to shortly revise the topic discussed in class, I have invited my students to start writing microfiction, following an assignment that I give them each week.


Sometimes called flash fiction, microfiction is the practice of writing a story or an idea in as few words as possible. At the University of Essex, it is used by Learning and Development to help students develop the skill to write concisely. In their workshops, they challenge students to write down a story or big idea in 10 words or fewer.

For students, putting down their thoughts and ideas concisely is an important skill when it comes to writing essays and dissertations. When writing an essay, it is important that they articulate their idea(s) clearly. Practising microfiction will help them do that.

The class under discussion is PY111 Introduction to Philosophy at the University of Essex. I teach two separate classes, on Fridays, a total of 22 students. This term, we will be reading Plato's Meno very closely, tackling not just the question of human virtue, but also of Socrates's methods of enquiry and the age-old philosophical question: what is philosophy?

Last week, we started reading the first few pages of the Meno, which involved a study of the character of Meno, the character of Socrates, and some preliminary thoughts on virtue, or human excellence.



At the end of the class, I proposed the following assignment for my students:

In 10 words or fewer, write down what sort of character Socrates is.

OR

In 10 words or fewer, express how there is the universal in ethical relativism.

Here are the results of my students putting their brain at work for 5 very short minutes:

"Socrates is wise because he admits he doesn't know everything."

"Socrates is wise as he accepts what he doesn't know."

"Socrates is an ironic guy that recognises his own flaws."

"The internet troll of Athens. Without the internet."

"Good teacher and philosopher as well as a classic instigator."

"Socrates is arrogant and cunning but yet awfully clever."

"Old, bearded, wise. But doesn't even know it."

"A wise man that knows himself to be a fool."

"Socrates. Wisest man in Athens. Knows nothing."

"Possessor of wisdom, through possession of ignorance."

"Described as wisest man, yet recognition not aware of everything."

I must say I am extremely happy with what they came up with. Some of these are very original, putting in their own words what we discussed in class and playing with grammar and meaning.

As no one endeavoured to tackle the second assignment, I wish to proof that - while perhaps not the best written sentence in history - it is possible:

"Many ways of being virtuous - still, all of them, virtuous."

And I will leave it there.



On non-native writing

It is laborious, as it happens, to write in the language most familiar to you - so that to write in a language which seems to be at a considerate distance from you, which you experience as external to you, becomes an even deeper challenge. Exactly for this reason it requires more practice, and so a new blog was born.

“By writing much, one learns to write well,” Robert Southey said once, according to Internet rumours. Since I decided to take this saying by heart, the idea of yet another blog has been wandering in and out of my head. I also considered keeping a diary, and therefore not display my thoughts where the whole world could access them, but figured that putting them online would result in a greater pressure to think carefully about which words to use and how to express myself. The problem is not that I cannot write in English – the aim is for me to learn to write well as well as to not take hours to get a good sentence out. From this it should be clear that, despite its presence on the World Wide Web, this blog is for me. Its genesis is my desire to improve my writing skills. Any reader, however, will be considered a most generous bonus.

The meaning of the chosen title of my blog will be the content of a future post, but it may be appropriate to address its inspiration . As part of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, the University of Essex puts on a module entitled 'Dangerous Ideas: Essays and Manifestos as Social Criticism'. I have had the luck to end up in this module as a notetaker for Student Support and have thus far enjoyed it immensely. The idea of manifestos fascinated me. To present or defend succinctly a way of life, an idea, a proposal for change – this seemed to me to be the perfect topic for my writing exercise.

And that is how we ended up here.