March 2011 Archives

Curating Your Digital Vita

By Christopher P. Long on March 29, 2011 4:00 PM  |
WACO, Texas -- During my visit to Baylor this week, I guest taught Anne Schultz's class on Plato's Symposium and joined the Academy for Teaching and Learning to speak about how I use digital media in my teaching, research and administrative work.

The title of my talk is Curating Your Vita: Cultivating Communities of Teaching, Research and Administration in a Digital Age.

The presentation is divided into three parts: Teaching, Research and Service. It takes each activity in turn as an opportunity to cultivate community around one's scholarly interests. I tried to rely on concrete examples of what has worked, and failed to work, for me as I put social media into practice in ways that, I hope, invite dialogue and discussion.

Teaching
My Philosophy 200 course, Ancient Greek Philosophy, was the focus of the section on teaching. Here are resources related to how I used a co-authored course blog to create a community of education in that course:
Research
I talked about the way I use the Digital Dialogue to invite scholars and colleagues to talk about their work and to develop my own work on Socratic politics.
Administration
I talked about how we use blogging, podcasting and video in the Liberal Arts Undergraduate Studies office in the College of the Liberal Arts to empower students to give voice to their undergraduate experience in the liberal arts.
In putting the presentation together, I was struck by something that had not occurred to me in concrete terms about how and why I share my activities on the internet. Although this sharing, which for some, I know, is over sharing, began as a natural desire to reach out to others about my work and invite them to share theirs, I realize that one of the most powerful things about sharing on the internet is the unanticipated possibilities that open when people put words to their experiences in public. In the presentation, I put it this way:

Sharing opens the possibility of serendipity.  

Here are some videos that show some of the serendipitous possibilities that opened as I shared my teaching, research and administrative activities: 


Finally, take a look at the slideshow of my excellent visit to Waco and Baylor University.  Thanks to all who made it possible.


Institutional Transformation

By Christopher P. Long on March 27, 2011 12:06 PM  |
The annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium held yesterday at the Penn Stater had an intensity to it that I had not experienced in years past. 

The energy and excitement we felt so palpably are symptoms, I think, of the success we at Penn State have had in theorizing and practicing social media in ways that create an enriching community of education. At the heart of our practice has long been the recognition that the educational power of social media lies in its ability to cultivate dynamic and genuine relationships between students, faculty and administrators.  

Yesterday's conference was eloquent testimony to the degree to which the communities we have been cultivating at the local level are taking root at the University level.
 
Clay Shirky keynote
For me, one of the most remarkable moments at the Symposium happened at the very start, during the keynote address by Clay Shirky.  Shirky is widely known for having said: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution," a statement Kevin Kelly dubbed the Shirky Principle. 

So it was striking that Shirky emphasized that he used to think digital media would transform the academy discipline by discipline as each determined ways to effectively adopt new media technologies for their specific content areas. Yesterday, however, he said he was increasingly convinced that the academy will be transformed institution by institution as administrators become willing, as he put it, to provide "air cover" for faculty on the ground engaging their students through social media.

As Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the College of the Liberal Arts, these words resonated with me. Indeed, they affirmed something I have been attempting to do since taking on this position a year an a half ago. 

But Shirky's point needs further refining, because it is not simply by providing "air cover" for faculty that we will transform institutions of education, but by adopting communicative practices as administrators that are rooted in the recognition that education is a cooperative, social activity.

At this year's Symposium the Liberal Arts Undergraduate studies office gave a presentation that focused on how we have adopted precisely such a communitlcative practice in an attempt to empower our atudents to give voice to their undergraduate experience in the liberal arts. Geoff Halberstadt, Liberal Arts Undergraduate Council President, has written eloquently about his experience engaging with us in LAUS through digital media. Jillian Balay spoke about her role curating our blogs and podcasts by thoughtfully working with students to articulate their educational experiences in compelling ways. And John Dolan talked about our College wide Teaching and Learning with Technology initiative which is designed to allow faculty to lead the College as we adopt new media practices.

In order to try to capture the spirit of the approach we have undertaken, we put together this fun little video which not only shows students, faculty and staff engaged in a cooperative project, but presents the caricature of an Associate Dean who does not get it, played by an Associate Dean who is trying to understand the affordances and limitations of social media by putting new digital media into practice:



BACAP Presentation: Attempting the Political Art

By Christopher P. Long on March 17, 2011 9:30 PM  |

Long at BACAP
Originally uploaded by cplong11
BOSTON, MA - The main thesis of the paper I delivered today at the Boston Area Colloquium for Ancient Philosophy is that the practice of Socratic political speaking and the practice of Platonic political writing are intimately interconnected but distinct. 

To develop this position, I focused on the famous passage from the Gorgias in which Socrates claims to be one of the few Athenians who attempt the political art truly and goes on to articulate the nature of his political practice as a way of speaking toward the best (521d6-e2). 

I then trace the ways Socrates attempts to use words to turn Gorgias, Polus and Callicles toward the best in the course of the dialogue.  What emerges is a picture of a philosophical friendship between Gorgias and Socrates rooted in a common concern for justice.

Yet, Socrates' success with Gorgias is overshadowed by his failure to convince Polus or Callicles to allow a concern for truth, justice and the good to animate the course of their lives. Even so, the political practice of Platonic writing is shown in the paper to be designed to awaken in us, the readers, precisely such a concern to live a life in which words are spoken in ways that uncover the truth and are directed toward the best.

Here is a slideshow of images from the visit:


There were a number of important points developed in the question and answer period to which I will point here, but they remain issues I am thinking about as I develop this larger book project on the practices of Socratic and Platonic politics.


Ranasinghe Responding
Originally uploaded by cplong11
Nalin Ranasinghe of Assumption College, who received his PhD from Penn State in the late 1980's, delivered a very generous response to the paper in which he agreed in large part with the project in general and my reading of the Gorgias in particular, a text on which he has written a book himself: Socrates in the Underworld: On Plato's Gorgias.  

He did raise, however, a number of concerns that echo some of the things I heard in response to the seminar I gave on the Apology in Colombia last month. 

Just as Catalina González Quintero had pressed me in Bogotá to delineate the negative side of Socratic politics in which Socrates provokes and punishes his interlocutor, Nalin was concerned that I did not do full justice to the agonistic dimension of the Gorgias, and particularly the fact that Socrates was punishing Callicles and Polus with public shame.  In the question and answer period, this issue was amplified with a number of questions about how rarely Socrates actually succeeds in cultivating in those he encounters a disposition to speak words "toward the best" and to respond to others with a shared concern for the truth.  

To respond adequately to this issue requires detailed textual analysis of specific dialogues in which it can be argued that Socrates does succeed in cultivating the active desire to speak and seek the truth, as for example, I argue happens to some degree with Gorgias in the Gorgias, and in a different and less developed way with Hippocrates in the Protagoras; and Glaucon shows some signs of this in the Republic too.

Other questions that arose concerned the degree to which the Socratic activity of philosophizing can be called "political" in any meaningful sense.  To this, however, I would defend the central claim of the project which is that "politics" needs to be rethought in terms of the activities that most effectively open the possibility of cultivating healthy communities of relationship between people. Such an understanding of politics would imply that "politics" is at work each time two people enter into relation with one another.  

Socrates, Plato and the Politics of Truth

By Christopher P. Long on March 11, 2011 8:30 PM  |

Strange Character of Writing
Originally uploaded by cplong11
Next week I am giving a lecture on Plato's Gorgias at Boston College for the Boston Area Colloquium for Ancient Philosophy. The title of the lecture is Attempting the Political Art.

Prior to the lecture, I will hold a seminar in which we will focus on those passages in the Gorgias in which truth is at stake as a political question. The seminar, entitled Socrates, Plato and the Politics of Truth, will begin with that strange passage from the Gorgias in which Socrates claims:
 
I think that with few Athenians, so as not to say the only one, I attempt the political art truly [ἐπιχειρεῖν τῇ ὡς ἀληθῶς πολιτικῇ τέχνῃ] and I alone of those now living do political things [πράττειν τὰ πολιτικὰ]; for it is not toward [πρὸς] gratification that I speak the speeches I speak on each occasion, but toward [πρὸς τὸ βέλτιστον] the best, not toward [πρὸς] the most pleasant ... (Gorgias, 521d6-e2).
This passage invites us not only to ask about the nature of the "art" that Socrates claims to be one of the few to attempt, but also to consider the question of the political nature of Platonic writing.  

The distinction between the ways of saying endemic to Socratic politics and the ways of writing endemic to Platonic politics will frame the discussion in the seminar.  In an essay on Plato's Protagoras that has recently appeared in Epoché, I have thematized this distinction in terms of the "topology of Socratic politics" and the "topography of Platonic politics." (For a more detailed discussion of the distinction, see Digital Dialogue 31: Shame and Justice, and more recently, see, Digital Dialogue 44: The Apology.)

For those students and faculty who will attend the seminar, we will focus our attention on the following passages in addition to the one cited above:

    • 453a8-b3: Where Socrates claims that he and Gorgias are each the sort of person who wants to know "the very thing for which the logos exists."
    • 453c2-4: Where Socrates connects the proper way to proceed with a way of speaking that makes things as evident as possible.
    • 457c4-d5: Where Socrates distinguishes between a way of speaking animated by a desire to win and one committed to making the matter at hand evident.
    • 458a2-5: Where Socrates insists that he is as happy to be refuted as to refute.
These passages point to the nature of the relationship between Gorgias and Socrates, which, I argue, grows through the dialogue into a kind of friendship rooted in a shared desire for the truth.  This can be heard in these passages, which we will also consider:

    • 463a1-5: Where Socrates is empowered by Gorgias to continue his discussion with Polus so as to make what they have been discussing evident. This leads to the discussion of the difference between a techne and an empeiria, an art or a knack.
    • 464e2-465a6: Suggests the nature of a techne, as Socrates uses it in the dialogue.
    • 500c1-503a9: Where Socrates articulates the beautiful rhetoric associated with philosophy.
    • 506b2-3: The final words Gorgias speaks in the dialogue, in which he encourages Socrates to continue the logos even when Callicles refuses to respond any longer.

Crisis of Community

By Christopher P. Long on March 10, 2011 3:41 PM  |

Chris Long talking Socrates
Originally uploaded by cplong11
Long, Christopher P. "Crisis of Community: The Topology of Socratic Politics in the Protagoras," Epoché: a Journal for the History of Philosophy, 15, 2 (2011): 361-377. 

In Plato's Protagoras Alcibiades plays the role of Hermes, the 'ambassador god', who helps lead Socrates' conversation with Protagoras through a crisis of dialogue that threatens to destroy the community of education established by the dialogue itself. 

By tracing the moments when Alcibiades intervenes in the conversation, we are led to an understanding of Socratic politics as always concerned with the course of the life of an individual and the proper time in which it might be turned toward the question of justice and the good.

If you are interested in the full text of this article in pdf format, please contact me.

To hear an audio recording of a version of this paper with a response from Anne-Marie Bowery and questions from the audience at the 2010 Ancient Philosophy Society, listen here:

« February 2011 | Main Index | Archives | April 2011 »
CpLlogo.gif

Subscribe

CpL Books

Aristotle on the Nature of Truth   The Ethics of Ontology

Search

CpL Videos

The Digital Dialogue

Christopher Long's bibliography

CpL Links

Tag Cloud

Recent Comments

Categories

Monthly Archives