BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN
Now that the arrangements have been made, I am hard at work preparing my first Marx lecture for a week from Monday. It feels good to be back again preparing to lecture. As soon as this lecture series is completed, probably in early or middle April, I will start teaching an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute [OLLI] course here at Carolina Meadows, under the auspices of the Duke branch of OLLI. The topic of the short six week course will be An Introduiction to the Dialogues of Plato. No heavy lifting: The Euthyphro, Crito, Apology, and Gorgias.
Great news! Will the Plato lectures also be available online?
ReplyDeleteNo heavy lifting? Plato is probably one of the greatest and most complex: western, secular philosophers to ever exist...
ReplyDeleteAbout a week ago, I was reading Plato's Apology and Socrates summarizes his affidavit here:
"Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others." --Benjamin Jowett ?
It was odd, that I finally realized, that throughout his speech, Socrates does make "the weaker argument into the stronger one." E.g. that death is better than life, or even exile, although the stronger argument is that it isn't. And that not corrupting the youth of Athens is not as important as "curiously" searching for the truth concerning the Oracle's response to Socrates: that he is the wisest man. Plus, he is curious about an afterlife where he can curiously question great men.
Cicero came close to this conclusion by saying if only Socrates used eloquence that he would be saved.
One should read Socrates affidavit again and realize how Plato toys with us mentally, or Socrates does this, in that he uses the same arguments to condemn himself in the Apology that he states in the affidavit. The question Socrates and Plato probably asks is: did you notice that Socrates uses the arguments in the affidavit, which he denies as true, to govern the course of his defense speech?
I always paired Socrates' argument for his acquiescence to the verdict with King's letter from jail.
ReplyDeleteWhen I said:
ReplyDelete"Socrates uses the arguments in the affidavit, which he denies as true, to govern the course of his defense speech?"
I did not mean that Socrates answered the charges brought to him in the affidavit by Meletus (and others) one by one and refuted them. We all know that he did that throughout the speech.
What I meant to say is that he used the subject matter of the affidavit (or the category that each argument fell under) to refute his accusers' charges. Meaning, the affidavit was proven by Socrates, to be false, by hypocritically using the same subject matter of the affidavit. So he proved he was not guilty of the crimes of the affidavit by being guilty of those same crimes through the words of his defense.
I'm sorry if there was any misunderstanding....