The Long Road

Digital Dialogue 18: Political Unconscious

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:32:32 -0500

Noëlle McAfee, Research Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, joins me for episode 18 of the Digital Dialogue which is another special SPEP edition.

Noëlle has numerous publications in the area of democratic political theory, social/political philosophy, feminist theory and American pragmatism including three books, Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship by Cornell University Press, 2000, Julia Kristeva, publish by Routledge in 2003, and a text that Shannon Sullivan and I discussed in episode 8 of the Digital Dialogue entitled Democracy and the Political Unconsious. She is here today to talk further about her book and to explore the transformative possibilities digital media opens for politics.

This year at SPEP, there was an excellent book panel on Noëlle's book in which Shannon Sullivan, of Penn State University and Robyn Marasco, of Hunter College, commented and Noëlle responded. A number of issues that grow out of that conversation frame some of our discussion on this episode of the Digital Dialogue.

Digital Dialogue 18 with Noëlle McAfee: Political Unconscious

To subscribe to the Digital Dialogue through iTunesU, click here.

Related Links

The Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Noëlle's excellent blog, Gone Public.
Noëlle has posted on her appearance on the Digital Dialogue here on Gone Public.
Global Voices Online: http://globalvoicesonline.org/

Video Postcard from Sundance

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:00:35 -0500

SUNDANCE, UT - Here is a little video I made for Val, Hannah and Chloe. I miss you all very much and wanted to share a bit of the beauty of this place with you.

Sorry about the shaking, but it was cold! Of particular humor is the little bramble on my hat in the last part. Enjoy and I can't wait to see you all tomorrow.

Engaged Learning with Technology

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:05:36 -0500

OREM, UT - At the Utah Valley University, there is a strong commitment to engaged learning. In what follows, I try to offer a model by which social media technology can be used to cultivate the active engagement of students in their own education.

This model is based on two insights:

Learning is social and so it is most effectively pursued in communities of education in which teachers and students are actively engaged together.
Social media technologies are transforming education because they are able to open dynamic communities of learning between teachers and students.

The power of new social media technologies for education lies not in the information they deliver, but the communities they can create.

Let me begin with a short presentation on the pedagogy of blogging and why I think it is particularly powerful in cultivating dynamic communities of engaged learning.

In order to speak in practical terms about how faculty might begin to cultivate such a dynamic community of learning in their classrooms, I would like to highlight the structure of my course on Ancient Greek Philosophy at Penn State.

This course focuses on the question of Socratic politics and is driven completely by our course blog, Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue. All the writing for the course except for the final research paper is posted to the blog.

Here is the syllabus for my PHIL200 Ancient Greek Philosophy course in pdf format.

There are no specific writing assignments. Students write when they are moved to write by the texts we are reading. As faculty, I have clearly set out the expectations for the course in the Blogging rubric (.pdf), which is the key to the success of this model.

The other way I try to cultivate the active participation of the students is through the Weekly Round-up podcasts they produce in teams each week. The goal of these podcasts is for students to reflect upon the week of class and to highlight readings, aspects of in-class discussion, blog posts and to connect them to issues of contemporary social-political concern.

Highlighting Success
Here I have gathered some links that highlight some of the ways we have been successful in cultivating a community of learning this semester:

Cody Yashinsky and Pam Dorian produced a weekly round-up podcast that focused on the media's influence on Philosophical discussion, the question of the Good and specific blog posts of the week.
Listen to Cody and Pam on Weekly Round-up #2

Themes and topics emerge organically as students gravitate to issues of common concern. This semester some of those issues have included:
The question of the Good, exemplified by the robust comments received by Jordan Sanford's post Why Should We Be Good?
The issue of piety and how it is related to the life of philosophy Socrates lives: here is a post from Cody Yashinsky entitled "Is Religion Part of the Good?" that typifies the sort of discussion this issue has generated.
We encouraged Marina McCoy from Boston College to invite her students to participate in our discussion when we realized that they were reading the Phaedrus the week we were.
Marina's post on Rhetoric and Soul Leading was commented upon heavily by her students and mine.
The dialogue between my students from Penn State and hers from Boston College was excellent. Take a look at the response Pam Dorian received on her post about the Charioteer Allegory in the Phaedrus.
Critical to the success of this model is how the blog is integrated into the classroom discussion. I use Evernote to highlight specific posts and comments in class for discussion.
This is a great way to get the students who are more reticent to talk in class to contribute to the discussion: call up their post and ask them to summarize it for discussion.

These examples beautifully illustrate the power social media has to cultivate a dynamic community of engaged learning.

I look forward to seeing what UVU might develop in this regard, as I am encouraged by the way UVU is already using its web presence to aggregate their social media activities through the UVU Social Media Directory.

Sophocles in Utah

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0500

SUNDANCE, UT - Today I participated on a panel for the honors program at the Utah Valley University, whose director, Michael Shaw, invited Marina McCoy and me to present papers for a panel dedicated to Women in Sophocles.

Michael and Marina joined me for Digital Dialogue 20 (available on December 1) to discuss the panel and the honors program at UVU.

Marina gave an excellent paper entitled Exile and Blindness in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus in which she argued that Theseus is the real hero of Oedipus at Colonus because he shows himself to be capable of genuine compassion and is open to the persuasive words of those around him.

My paper entitled, A Father's Touch, A Daughter's Voice: Antigone, Oedipus and Ismene at Colonus, traces three moments of touching in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus that mark the emergence of a politics other than that of patriarchal domination.

Here is a brief overview of the itinerary of the paper:

This paper pursues a path marked by three moments of touching in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, each of which articulates something of the logic of what I call the politics of the between and the economy endemic to the community it opens. The first occurs when Oedipus reaches for his daughters at the end of Oedipus the King. It marks the institution of a community between Oedipus and his daughters no longer dominated by patriarchal sovereignty.

The second moment of touching occurs in Oedipus at Colonus when Ismene and Antigone embrace Oedipus after their abduction by Creon. In this scene, a constellation emerges that beautifully embodies the very structure of the politics of the between. Here, situated between Antigone and Ismene, Oedipus is bound to a community of reciprocal support born of a trauma that anticipates the resurgence of the politics of violence and retribution that will condition its ultimate demise.

The destitution of this community of compassion between them is marked, however, by a third moment of touching, one that mirrors the first, as Oedipus hands his daughters over to Theseus thus opening the possibility that Athens herself might once again serve as the site of a politics of the between.

For more information on the nature of the politics of the between and my critique of patriarchal politics, see my article: The Daughters of Metis: Patriarchal Dominion and the Politics of the Between, available here as a pdf file.

For Hannah on her Fourth

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:18:00 -0500

Dear Hannah:

Today is the day we have been talking about since the summer - finally, it's your birthday!

Today we celebrate you and the way you have celebrated us everyday since you arrived four years ago.

I have always admired the way you inhabit the world. You bring a sense of joy to everything you do and to everyone you meet.

You have your own way of moving through the world that makes me smile.

And when you dance, it is something to behold...

So on this day of celebration, I have produced a little recording base on our discussion about your fourth birthday.

Listen to Hannah talk about her 4th Birthday

The two pictures here mark the day of your birth and the weekend before your fourth birthday.

We all wish you a very happy birthday and look forward to being with you as you grow into your fourth year.

Love,
Dad

Digital Dialogue 17: Parmenides

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:56:41 -0500

Rose Cherubin, Associate Professor of Philosophy at George Mason University, joins me and a special panel of colleagues from the Ancient Philosophy Society for a special SPEP edition of the Digital Dialogue. We gathered together in Arlington, VA to discuss the paper Rose Cherubin gave at the APS panel at SPEP entitled "Parmenides: Another Way."

Rose specializes in Ancient Greek Philosophy, particularly the thinking of Parmenides, and metaphysics. She has published numerous articles in Ancient Greek Philosophy and she is currently working on a book related to the thinking of Parmenides with the working title: Justice, Knowledge and Inquiry. My other two panelists are previous interlocutors on the Digital Dialogue, Sara Brill, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University, who joined me for Digital Dialogue episode 13 on Psychology and Politics, and Jill Gordan, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Philosophy at Colby College, who joined me for Digital Dialogue episode 9 on Erotic Politics.

Digital Dialogue 17 with Rose Cherubin, Jill Gordon and Sara Brill: Parmenides

Subscribe to the Digital Dialogue through iTunesU.

Resources

Austin, Scott. Parmenides and the History of Dialectic. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2007.
Cassin, Barbara. "Who's Afraid of the Sophists? Against Ethical Correctness." Trans. Charles T. Wolfe. Hypatia 15.4 (2000): 102-120. (Available online via JSTOR.)
Cherubin, Rose. "Legein, Noein, and To Eon in Parmenides." Ancient Philosophy 21_ (2001): 277-303.
________, "Alētheia from Poetry into Philosophy: Homer to Parmenides." In Logos and Muthos, edited by William Wians. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009.
Hermann, Arnold. To Think Like God. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004.
Miller, Mitchell. "Ambiguity and Transport: Reflections on the Proem to Parmenides' Poem." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 30 (2006): 1-47.
Robbiano, Chiara. Becoming Being. International Pre-Platonic Studies 5. Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2006.
Tarán, Leonardo. Parmenides. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965.

Long's PHIL200 course, Fall 2009

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:02:57 -0500

Last week Professor McCoy posted a picture of her class at Boston College, so we thought it only appropriate to take a picture of our own and post it here on the blog too.

So, here we are after today's class, the last on Plato's Phaedrus. Thursday we begin the Symposium.

From left to right, in the back row are: Olivia Raimonde, Sky Hippo, Anthony Zirpoli, Tony Arnold, Pam Dorian, John Koznecki, Anna Torres Cacoullos, Jack Kelly, Daniel Mininger, Drew Bullard, Christa Spinelli, Mike Yourchak, Taylor Ferber, Jingting Zhao, Bhavya Kaushal, Andrew Starks, Sean Tabatcher, Betty Walker and Joni Noggle.

From left to right, in the front row are: Ed Mily, Josh Testa, Tim Bair, Cody Yashinsky, Jordan Sanford, Christopher Long and Sam Borchers.

Time Management for Graduate Students

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:31:36 -0500

One of the most difficult things for new Graduate Students to manage effectively is their time. This is in large part because graduate study has built into it large segments of unstructured time that can easily be wasted. One of the most important skills graduate students can learn early in their career is how to structure their time effectively.

I have gathered here some suggestions that might help students take control of their time so that it can be used most productively.

Know Thyself
I mean this not only in the ancient Greek sense of knowing one's limits--although this is part of it--but specifically I mean: know when you do your best creative work and reserve that time for writing or other intellectual activities that require a high degree of concentration.

Are you a morning person? Do you do your best work at night?

Time Thyself
One of the best tricks I learned some time ago was to set an alarm on my desktop for a certain amount of time during which I would focus on a single task, be it reading an article, writing notes, free writing or editing. Focus on nothing other than the task at hand until the alarm goes off.

Here is a link to Unclutterer's discussion of desktop timers which has some suggestions about free alarm clocks for the PC and Mac.
About.com suggests a nice little timer trick in which you focus on specific tasks for shorter, 20 minute periods.

This timing strategy does on a small scale what you should also do on a larger scale: set deadlines for yourself. You can do this with self-discipline or shame; for the latter, try making an appointment with a colleague or professor in which you will discuss some element of your work that will be complete by that time. You'd be surprised how motivating it is not to want to seem clueless in front of others - this is part of what motivates many of us teachers to prepare like crazy.

Take Control of Email/Social Media
Studies have shown that each time you check your email it takes an average of 15 minutes to return to your original task. You need to take full control of when you give yourself over to checking email and other forms of social media.

Turn off the automatic alert on your email, IM service, etc.

Get Organized
You need to have a reliable calendar that you can easily use to keep track of all your appointments. You also should have a dynamic way to track and prioritize what you have do. There are many computer programs that can help in this regard.

With regard to ToDo lists, it is helpful to be able to organize them according to projects that keep the work in various courses and other academic and personal projects separate. I have been using Things lately, and like it quite a bit. A nice, free, but less involved, list maker is available at Zenbe.com.

I have also been making excellent use of Evernote, which allows you to keep notes of all kinds in the cloud and syncs with multiple computers and smart phones.

A Quiet Space
It is not always easy to find a good, quiet space to work; one with few distractions. It is critical to locate one, be it in your apartment, on campus or in a cafe. If you are working in public, it is often helpful to have your earphones in your ears even if you are not actually listening to anything through them. Earphones can function as earplugs, filtering out distracting noise and fostering concentration. Plus, people are less likely to interrupt you if they think you are listening to something.

Down Time
I often see graduate students who are exhausted and over extended. People don't often realize that intellectual activity is often as tiring as physical exercise. Make sure you give yourself down time as it cultivates creativity and increases productivity.

Get enough sleep: it seems that less than seven hours a night cripples productivity, memory retention and creativity. See this article on How Much Sleep Do We Really Need? on the website of the National Sleep Foundation.
Allow your mind to wander: I know it sounds strange for me to suggest this, but allowing your mind to go where it will as you perform menial tasks can help you work through a particularly difficult question or issue.
Move: when your body is healthy, your mind becomes stronger, so be sure to get out from behind the desk and walk or exercise. This is not wasted time, but part of an overall strategy of success.
Reward yourself with something fun you like to do when you have accomplished something; or use it as an end toward which your work is directed.

Some Resources

Unclutterer.com is a blog about getting and staying organized that has some good suggestions about time management.
43 Folders is a blog about finding the time to do your best creative work.

When the Berlin Wall Fell

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:09:00 -0500

Twenty years ago today, I can remember the buzz that spread among my American student colleagues at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna when we learned that the Berlin Wall had fallen.

Just two weeks before, a group of us had been in Prague where we met a number of students from Czechoslovakia, as it was then called. They told us in no uncertain terms that something momentous was happening. At the time they and we did not know whether this was something to welcome or fear.

Upon our return to Vienna, we discussed the question in our European History course. The professor was a former Ambassador who assured us that whatever changes may or may not be underway, the overarching paradigm that held European powers in the grips of the Cold War would not change in his lifetime. (This marked an early realization of a truth that has borne itself out over the course of the last twenty years: professors don't always know what they are talking about and the more certain they appear, the less their words should be uncritically accepted.)

Two and a half weeks later, many of us were on a train to Berlin to witness first hand the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In Berlin the excitement those of us gathered at the wall felt that day remains palpable. Borrowing a sledgehammer from a local German, I can still feel the thrill that came as I knocked off the large chunk I still have set upon my bookshelf.

I recall too, a discussion I had with a very thoughtful and earnest young Lutheran pastor from East Germany who watched the scene unfolding before us with trepidation. His hope, as he expressed it to a young American student genuinely concerned to try to put a context to the history that he was witnessing, was that the West would not simply view this development as an opportunity to impose capitalist values and culture on the Eastern bloc. It was, of course, unclear precisely how things would progress, but there remained a sense that a genuine meeting of the best ideas of the East and West might have an opportunity to converge.

As I think back on those days, I am once again made aware that ideas have the power to transform reality.

But for me, this had less to do with the fall of the Berlin Wall, than with the students and teachers I encountered and the experiences I had during my semester abroad in that fall of 1989. To meet students and educators who actively sought to imagine what life was like in another culture, to learn a new language, and to open themselves to the transformative possibilities of education was of decisive importance to me at a formative time in my life.

And although I did not take a philosophy course when I was in Vienna, when I returned, I was convinced that my course would tack toward education and that philosophy was the path it would have to take.

Digital Dialogue 16: Emerson and Self-Culture

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:23:34 -0500

John Lysaker, Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, joins me for the first of three special SPEP 2009 editions of the Digital Dialogue recorded in Arlington, VA at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existentialist Philosophy.

John's research focuses on philosophical psychology, aesthetics, social and political philosophy, and 19th and 20 century continental and American philosophy.

He has numerous publications in these areas, including two monographs, his first, You Must Change Your Life: Poetry and the Birth of Sense, was published in 2002 by Penn State University Press, and his second, Emerson and Self-Culture, was published in 2008 by Indiana University Press.

He is also the co-author of Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self, published in 2008 by Oxford University Press, and the co-editor of Emerson and Thoreau: Figures of Friendship forthcoming in January 2010 from the University of Indiana Press.

It is John's work on Emerson that brings him to the Digital Dialogue today. In it, John enters into dialogue with the thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson in order to perform self-culture, which he understands as an ongoing activity of self-realization in which one articulates and affirms the commitments and values that animate one's life.

Digital Dialogue 16 with John Lysaker: Emerson and Self-Culture

To subscribe to the Digital Dialogue via iTunesU, click here.

IT Faculty Advisory Committee Presentation

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Two weeks ago, I was asked to present my model for Integrating Teaching and Research with Technology. Although today I return to that material in my presentation to the University Information Technology Faculty Advisory Committee, three exciting new developments have occurred that must here be emphasized.

These developments concern the manner in the community of learning we have cultivated on the Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue blog has expanded beyond the boundaries not only of the classroom, but also of the institution itself.

Marina McCoy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College has encouraged the students in her course entitled Rhetoric: Truth, Beauty, Power, to comment on our blog. Since we welcomed the BC students to our digital community last week, the conversation on the blog has exploded.
In order to encourage dialogue across universities, I worked with TLT here at Penn State to add Professor McCoy as a co-editor of the blog so she could write posts of her own. She published a post on the question of the meaning of soul leading which generated a lot of commentary about contemporary political speech.
The Digital Dialogue, the podcast I have been producing dedicated to cultivating the excellences of dialogue in a digital age, now has a Facebook page and Professor McCoy has again invited her students to comment specifically on the latest episode, number 15 with Holly Moore, a former Philosophy undergraduate student at Penn State who received her PhD from DePaul University in mid-October. My digital dialogue with her focuses on her dissertation. Professor McCoy has encouraged her students to subscribe to the Digital Dialogue via iTunesU [link opens iTunesU] and respond to episode 15 by commenting on the blog.
This has generated a very interesting discussion around Dr. Holly Moore's work. Although my favorite comment is the one that compares my "radio voice" to that of Peter Sagal, the most exciting thing about this is that we have on our course blog a class from BC engaged with a visiting Professor and recent PhD currently at Colby College engaged in dialogue about philosophical issues of mutual concern.

The Philosophy Job Market in Today's Economy

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:30:00 -0500

ARLINGTON, VA - The search for a job in any field in the midst of an economic downturn can be harrowing; for those seeking jobs in a field like Philosophy where even in good economic times, the competition for jobs is stiff, the job search can be especially demoralizing.

Here I have gathered some resources for the graduate student who attended the Graduate Student Colloquium at the 2009 Society for Phenomenology and Existentialist Philosophy (SPEP) where I spoke on a panel entitled "The Job Market in Today's Economy."

The Situation
There is no question that the job market in Philosophy and the Humanities is tightening. Inside Higher Education emphasized in their article, The Tightening Humanities Job Market, published at the end of last year the particular difficulties in the discipline of Philosophy. Last spring, the New York Times was reporting that Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times, and it looks like we are seeing that play out in the list of job offerings in Philosophy this year.

On a more positive note, a number of institutions with which I am familiar, particularly the large state universities, have received substantive funds from the Stimulus Bill passed earlier this year. This will allow them to proceed with some hiring this year. However, we might need to anticipate another downturn in job opportunities in two years when the stimulus money dries up.

Of the 140 jobs listed in the October 2009 Jobs for Philosophers, only 4 explicitly mention an interest in continental philosophy. So SPEP students will have to position themselves to compete for jobs in areas that are not explicitly announced as "continental." This will not be difficult as the large majority of students at SPEP have a broad range of interests and expertise.

Good Preparation
There are a number of concrete ways to improve your chances on the job market:

Write a marketable dissertation. Decisions about what to write your dissertation on are complicated. Primary consideration needs to be given to your passion for and interest in the topic. However, such decisions ought not be made in a vacuum and one important consideration will be the degree to which you will increase your opportunities for placement by writing such a dissertation.

Specifically, it is advisable to write a dissertation that goes into some depth with regard to a specific thinker or theme that cuts across a broader spectrum of traditions and is able to speak to a wide range of approaches. Even if you don't orient your own work by those other approaches, be aware of them and able to articulate and position your work in relation to them.

Publish something in a well-respected journal.
Give a Paper at a Conference where they use blind review.
Develop Pedagogical Excellence: work on your teaching, teach as much as you can, write your one page teaching philosophy, develop a teaching portfolio.
Ask yourself: what distinguishes me from other candidates, what do I bring to a job that others don't?

Cultivate an online, digital identity
As we experience the transformative possibilities new social media opens for education, it is important for students to begin to think intentionally about how this media can be use to further the pedagogical and intellectual ideals of philosophy. With regard to placement, the question as to one's online, digital identity becomes critical.

Use Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc., to articulate a serious, academic and engaged voice of your own.
Leigh Johnson: readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore
Joshua Miller: anotherpanacea
Participate in social media related to Academia generally and Philosophy in particular:
Academia.edu is a site where faculty, graduate students and institutions can establish profiles to highlight their work.
Philosophywiki.org is a site where you can set up a profile about yourself and your work.

Opening Other Options
Post-doctoral Fellowships
Below is a list of a few post-doctoral fellowships that might be relevant to graduate student and early PhD members of SPEP working in contemporary continental philosophy and related areas in the history of philosophy.

German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for students doing work on German thinkers and topics related to German Philosophy who intend to spend time at a German University.
Henry Frank Guggenheim Research Grants are given to research that can increase understanding and amelioration of urgent problems of violence, aggression, and dominance in the modern world.
Fulbright, Council for International Exchange of Scholars offers a wide range to funding opportunities for US Scholars, both post-docs and graduate students.
The Spencer Foundation has fellowships for doctoral students and post-docs working in research areas related to education.
The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has a dissertation research awards available for students working in Ethics and Religion (Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship) and Women & Gender (Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies).
The American Association of University Women has dissertation and post-doctoral fellowships for women US citizen from accredited institutions.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has post-doc fellowships for work related to German philosophy.

Fixed term positions at home university or local colleges
Despite the economic situation, teaching still goes on, students are applying to college and colleges are offering classes. Many colleges and universities are offering fixed term positions for their students or for students from other institutions.

Ask department chairs, directors of graduate studies if such opportunities exist at your institution.
Talk to faculty such possibilities at the institutions of their colleagues.

Some Resources

SPEP has introduced a jobs announcement section of the website, but this seems only to be as good as the institutions who submit. It does provide insight into which institutions are interested in the work being done by members of the society.
American Philosophical Association publishes, of course, the Jobs for Philosophers; they also have a Job Seekers Database, which seems to be under construction at the moment, but which students should use when it is up.
The Philosophy Jobs Wiki lists jobs offered by many institutions and is updated by the users. It is only as accurate, of course, as the users are engaged and reliable. My experience, though, is that it is often very accurate, although it is important to recognize that it is not to be taken as the official mode of communication from colleges and universities.
Penn State Philosophy Department Best Placement Practices page was developed to help our students think about how to position themselves to success on the market. The suggestions are available for all interested students.
Shortened URL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/spepjobpanel09

Contact Information

Christopher Long
longc@psu.edu

Welcome BC Students to our Digital Community

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:50:43 -0500

I am very happy to welcome students from Marina McCoy's course at Boston College entitled, Rhetoric: Truth, Beauty, Power. Professor McCoy is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College who has written a wonderful book entitled Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists.

She joined me on the Digital Dialogue for episode 6: Attentive Listening in which we discussed the Protagoras and the idea of sympathetic listening she develops in her book.

To the students of Rhetoric: Truth, Beauty, Power, I would like to extend a warm welcome on behalf of myself and my students.

As you will experience, the students in my PHIL200 Ancient Philosophy course have cultivated a very welcoming and lively community of dialogue and learning. I see already that some students from BC have joined the dialogue - thanks to Steph Fernandes and Chris Kirby for jumping right into the discussion.

We look forward to expanding our discussion of the Phaedrus with you, particularly as I know that you have been reading the dialogue too over the course of the past few class sessions.

Please don't hesitate to establish an account with the service that handles our comments, Intense Debate. If you make a profile with them, you can upload a picture and we can subscribe to your comments. You can also, if you are so moved, leave a video comment.

Digital Dialogue 15: Plato's Analogical Thinking

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0500

Holly Moore, who defended her dissertation, entitled "Plato's Analogical Thought" at DePaul University on October 12th, 2009, joins me for episode 15 of the Digital Dialogue. Dr. Moore is a graduate of Penn State's Undergraduate Program in Philosophy. She did her honors thesis with Professor Mark Munn, who joined me for episode 12 of the Digital Dialogue in which we discussed his project on the relationship between eros and democracy.

Holly is currently a faculty fellow at Colby College. Her dissertation argues for the intimate connection between Plato's use of images and his ultimate philosophical teaching. More specifically, she insists that the images Plato articulates and the story his philosophy has to tell about images are inextricably connected. For Holly, Plato is an analogical thinker because the self-reflection and relational structure of analogies expresses something decisive about Platonic thinking.

Digital Dialogue 15 with Holly Moore: Plato's Analogical Thinking

To subscribe to the Digital Dialogue via iTunesU, click here.

Related Resources

The Sun-Good analogy and divided line: Republic, Book VI, 505a-511e
The Third Kind and "Chorology": Timaeus, 48e-53c
Division and Definition of Weaving: Statesman, 279c-283a
Application of weaving as a mode for statescraft: Statesman, 305e-311c

A Question of Piety

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:58:45 -0500

When I heard the story, A 'Collision' of Beliefs: Atheist Vs. Theologian, this evening on All Things Considered about the new documentary, Collision, in which Christopher Hitchens and Pastor Douglas Wilson debate the question: "Is Christianity Good for the World," I immediately thought of all of you and the robust discussions we have been having this semester concerning the question of piety and the role it plays in philosophy.

The link under Collision above points you to a shorter video clip, here I have also embedded a longer clip of the movie.

As we continue to think and talk about the Phaedrus and, following on Tony's post on the Face of the Gods..., the role a certain piety plays in Socratic dialogue, I thought it would be interesting to link to this story to underscore at least two points.

First, note how Hitchens and Wilson embrace the vocabulary of "collision" even as they undertake a thoughtful, vigorous and respectful debate. Clearly, each thinks the other absolutely wrong, and yet they are able to engage one another in ways that are illuminating and thoughtful. After our reading of the Gorgias, where the central metaphor for discussion was that of war, I wonder if the model of respectful collision offers a different perspective on dialogue in which differences are exposed without the ultimate goal being reconciliation...

Second, a theme that has emerged in this course and on our blog is that of piety. Posts on piety and religion consistently receive the most comments and the most passionate responses. Socrates himself, of course, was charged with impiety by the Athenians in 399 BCE even as he insists, in the Apology, that he has lived a life in service of the god (Apollo) who spoke through the oracle at Delphi, saying that no one was wiser than Socrates (Apology, 21a-23c). Socrates found this strange and sought to prove it false by engaging others in dialogue concerning knowledge. (This, indeed, might be thought to be rather impious - attempting to prove the god wrong!) What Socrates reports having discovered, however, is that his wisdom involved the recognition that "when I do not know, neither do I think I know ... I do not think I know what I do not know" (Apology, 21d). Socrates is thus able to justify his life-long activity - philosophy - as a service to the god in which he shows anyone who thinks they know, that they do not know (see, Apology, 23b5) in order to prove that the wisdom he possesses is that of the knowledge of his own ignorance - a deeply human form of wisdom.

What sort of piety is involved here? Hitchens rejects Wilson's suggestion that Hitchens is acting with a sense of piety when he appeals to science and reason. Wilson insists that Hitchens has faith in science and religion. For his part, Hitchens sounds very Socratic in his recognition of the finitude of human understanding even as he rejects the idea that his is a position of faith. Surprisingly, Wilson appeals to human finitude as the source of faith, both his and that of Hitchens (at least as Wilson sees it).

As we have discussed, the Phaedrus is situated in a highly ritualized context, with Socrates and Phaedrus both barefoot (229a2) under the plane tree, by a stream with the cicadas singing overhead (230b-c; for more on the cicadas, see, 258e-259e). Socrates himself introduces the Delphic inscription, Know Thyself, and interprets it in terms of his own lack of knowledge (229e-230a): what, then, is the relationship between piety and human finitude and how does it inform the philosopical life Socrates undertakes?