May 2010 Archives

As the 2009-2010 academic year comes to a close, it is fitting that Teaching and Learning with Technology has just completed the video documenting the way I used blogging in my Fall 2009 Ancient Greek Philosophy course.  We have already posted an excellent video telling the Story of PHIL200 from a slightly different perspective. 

Jill Gordon, Dana Professor of Philosophy at Colby College, and Sara Brill, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University, join me for episode 33 of the Digital Dialogue to discuss Catherine Zuckert's keynote address at the 2010 Ancient Philosophy Society held at Michigan State. The address was entitled: "Two Paradigms of Philosophy: Socrates and Timeaus." Catherine Zuckert has recently published an extensive study of the dialogues entitled Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues with the University of Chicago Press. In that text, she offers a reading of the dialogues in accordance with the chronological order of the drama they articulate.

Digital Dialogue 33: Brill, Gordon and Long on Zuckert's Keynote at APS 2010

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Hannah L. Lewis
Dr. Christopher Long
Phil495
6 May 2010

The pre-Socratic philosophers, many scholars assert, represent a shift between mythology and philosophy, superstition and reason. A large reason for this belief is the idea that the pre-Socratics subscribe to a more empirically and rationally based ideology than the creative and religious ideology with which they are often contrasted. However, these arguments tend to be based on arbitrary distinctions and misconceptions. For example, to think of the pre-Socratics as physicists, who look at material reality as the basis of their metaphysical and cosmological ideas is only partially accurate. Much of the religious belief of the Greek culture, though scrutinized and criticized, ends up being appropriated in a new and different way in the pre-Socratics philosophy.

Episode 32 of the Digital Dialogue is a recording of my paper on Plato's Protagoras entitled, "Crisis of Community: The Topology of Socratic Politics," delivered at the 10th Annual Independent meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society.

The paper is part of a larger project that investigates the nature of Socratic Politics by attending to the manner in which Socrates practices politics in the dialogues themselves. 

In this essay, I argue that Socrates interrupts his plans for the day in order to go with Hippocrates to the house of Callias where Protagoras is staying.  The discussion is facilitated at certain important points by Alcibiades who, I argue, plays the part of Hermes in the dialogue itself.

The podcast includes the comments by Anne-Marie Bowery of Baylor University and the questions and discussion from the APS gathered at Michigan State this spring.

Digital Dialogue 32: Christopher Long at APS 2010: The Topology of Socratic Politics

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