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The one after that I mistranslated too. Looked up whether ‘hand’ could take the plural. I looked up the Greek also for the phrase I had seen translated as “wind eggs” at the end of the Theaetetus. In the Greek word, which I can’t remember now, I saw evidence of “wind” but nothing at all that suggested the idea of “eggs”. Yet I couldn’t recall the Greek word for eggs.
I was struck by the conclusion of the Theaetetus: in the end we are better people for realizing we don’t know much of anything. Not the same but a similar feeling on reading this one section of The Pale King recently — Wallace portraying some young men realizing that people are cool are not necessarily people of value. People realizing that intelligence exists and they don’t have it. (Reading this seemed to melt away some of my own unintelligence. And unintelligence –strangely, as I think the Theatetus brings up– has to do with presuming one’s own intelligence — that one, simply by virtue of being one’s extraordinary self, knows everything already more or less well enough.)
Maybe part of the pleasure of reading a book is that of of having a part of one’s intelligence melted away — and the reason this is a pleasure is that, at the same time, it’s understood — that this has not actually been intelligence. This has been some imposter intelligence you’ve been cozening, all this while.
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What if the combination of democracy and capitalism is given to increasing individuals’ sense of self importance? (That is, to the vast majority of individuals). Democracy giving the feeling to people: they are somebody. Capital giving to people the idea: they have no one.
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