2013 Plato Seminar Conference

2013 Plato Seminar Conference

2:00-4:45

Morrison Hall 107

2:00-2:20    “Socrates- a paragon of rationality?”  -Jared Brandt

2:30-2:50   “Education, Courage, and the Homeric Warrior Ethic:

      A Reflection on the Laches”   - Nathan L. Cartagena

3:00-3:20   “A Mythological Critique of Eros in Plato’s Symposium” -  Benjamin Guido

3:30-3:45    Break

3:45-4:05    “Cave Diving: An In-Depth Analysis of the Social, Spiritual,

and Philosophic Messages of the Allegory of the Cave”   -Bryant Windham

4:15-4:35    “The Dialectic Of Giveness in The Myth Of Er”   - Matt Wilson

Theaetetus as Plato's Second Apology

 HEre's a link to a review of   a new book that links the Theaetetus to the Apology.


http://www.bmcreview.org/2013/11/20131147.html

Rotation for paper exchanges

Jared to Ben
Ben to Matt
Matt to Nathan
Nathan to Bryant
Bryant to Jared 

link to Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy

 Jared's question  about Hegel and SK and socrates, got me thinking about what Hegel says about Plato.   

Here's the link.


http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpplato.htm

Anne's Abstract

Hi All,

Here is an abstract that Paul Carron and I worked up for the  Midwest Christian Philosophers meeting.  

“Advice to a Christian Philosopher – Pray like Socrates!”

Anne-Marie Schultz and Paul E. Carron

Honors College, Baylor University

Anne_Marie_Schultz@baylor.edu

Paul_Carron@baylor.edu

In this essay we make two related claims: the first is that Socratic knowledge consists of more than cognitive assent to propositional truth claims: as Hadot states, “When Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, he was not using ‘knowledge’ to mean pure, abstract knowledge of the good. Rather, he meant knowledge which chooses and wants the good—in other words, an inner disposition in which thought, will, and desire are one.”[1]  The second related claim is the main focus of this essay: cultivating this unified inner disposition requires practices alongside discourse – indeed, it demands extra-rational sources of knowledge.  Many religious traditions include the idea that knowledge is more than cognitive assent and therefore have other means (besides just rational discourse) to attaining that knowledge.  For instance, strains in the Buddhist and Christian traditions include prayer and other meditative techniques as methods of coming to a greater understanding of reality and the self.  The Socratic dialogues also contain hints of a number of “extra-rational” prayer-like sources of knowledge such as: intense dialectical philosophical discussion; taking the Delphic oracle seriously through inquiry (which we argue is a display of piety and not anti-religious rationalism contra Vlastos); spiritual exercises such as mediation as illustrated in Socrates’ moments of silence in the Symposium and the Phaedo; the intense concentration required to even briefly glimpse true beauty in the assent passage in the Symposium; indications of the longer way in the Republic; qualifications about complete discursive knowledge of the good in numerous dialogues; and the turn to myth at the end of the Republic, Phaedo, and Gorgias.  We argue that taken together these various instances demonstrate that Socratic knowledge is not acquired through rational discourse alone, but through a number of prayer-like methods that help the self to cultivate a unified disposition of love for the good.  Furthermore, the Socratic model offers productive ways of thinking about philosophical Christian experience in the contemporary world, thereby illustrating what is at the heart of Platinga’s exhortations to Christian philosophers: Be like Socrates.

---

[1] Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? 2002: 65 (our emphasis).

Class today and schedule for the next couple weeks

Hi All,

Looking forward to class today,  Matt,  Nathan, and Bryant,  please post your blogs when you get a chance.

Next week   I'll be away at the Ancient Philosophy Society meeting held in  conjunction with SPEP. 

Your abstracts are due. 

Please post your abstracts to the blog   and  read each other's abstracts.  Please offer  each other comments.  You don't need to do an additional blog post. 


What I have decided to do about 10/31 when the SK  conference is  here,  let's meet  from 2-2:40 and we'll go over the opening of the Phaedo.  Please do a blog for this week    Then we will head over for the   3  PM  session  that  Matt is presenting  in.


We'll do the rest of the  Phaedo on Nov  7.

Meet at 2:30 today

Hi  All,  Just a reminder that we meet at  2:30 today.

Great  job with the blogs. I encourage you to spend the  30 minutes of class time  reading and responding to each others blogs!


Nathan was asking about some historical background issues.  I refer you to Nails' People of Plato  and also  this  article.



Gifford, M. “Dramatic Dialectic in Republic Book 1.” In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy Volume XX. Ed. David Sedley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2001): 34-106.