Posts Tagged Socrates
Being Old in a Democracy: Peter Lawler on Plato and Us
Posted by Tom McDonald in Web Detritus on November 28, 2011
Why is oldness found so repulsive in our culture today? Why do old people feel so compelled to make themselves look like worse versions of young people through plastic surgery? The easy answer is ‘it’s natural’, i.e., youth gives a competitive Darwinian advantage, so if we have the bio-technology available to keep ourselves younger we gotta go for it! However, one of the most important reasons for studying historical philosophy is for how it can help free us from the groupthink of the present age. Does our democratic culture’s focus on fulfilling individual possibilities make us death-denying and therefore age-denying?
As Dylan noted in PEL Episode 40 on Plato’s Republic, Socrates’ criticism of democracy is often emphasized in classrooms for its ability to give us critical perspective on the democratic values we normally do not question. Thus Peter Lawler turns to Plato’s dialog for its analysis of how the political regime, democracy in particular, shapes the soul and its attitude (perhaps the soul just is an attitude) toward life, aging, and death.
Myles Burnyeant (and Bryan Magee) on Plato
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Things to Watch on July 14, 2011
Here’s another old Bryan Magee video where he interviews Myles Burnyeant:
Anyone who’s listened to our Plato episodes will find nothing new in this first clip, which is just about who Plato and Socrates were, how Socrates died, and what Plato’s dialogues look like. Around 5 minutes in, Burnyeant lays out the evolution from the early dialogues through the more positive middle period (e.g. Republic); this is taken up again in clip 2, around 6:30. Buryeant focuses on the (e.g. epistemological positions) as Plato’s most important original contributions. Around 2:00 of clip 3, he gives a formulation of the theory of forms: “that justice, beauty, and the like exist independently of and prior to all the just acts, beautiful things…” He doesn’t seem to have any doubts about attributing this theory to Plato (as we did on the ‘cast), but he does warn against taking talk of the “world of forms” too literally; it means a set of “invariable generalities,” not a world of particular things.
Episode 18: Plato: What Is Knowledge?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on April 20, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:17:56 — 126.3MB)
Discussing the Theaetetus and the Meno, two dialogues about knowledge.
We’re returning to Plato for a somewhat more thorough treatment than we gave him in Episode 1. This should be considered part two (Hume being #1) of three discussions intended to convey the main conflict in the history of epistemology between the empiricists (like Hume) and the rationalists (like Plato).
We slog through most of the Theaetetus, where Plato considers and rejects a series of mostly very lame conceptions of knowledge and replaces them at the end with… NOTHING. Seth is crushed. In the Meno, knowledge is “remembrance” (maybe), like anything worth knowing can’t be learned but only elicited out of the depths of your unconscious.
Read along: The Theaetetus and The Meno, or if you don’t like the funky background on those pages, look them up via Project Gutenberg. You could also purchase
Seth did this diagram to express his love of the Meno.
End song: “Obvious Boy” by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000). Listen to the whole album online.
Part 2 of Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.”
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on May 13, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:00 — 41.2MB)
More discussion of Plato’s “Apology.”
Incidentally, the “celibacy society” that Seth refers to at one point in here has a T-shirt.
Part 1 of Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.”
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on May 12, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:11 — 38.6MB)
Discussing Plato’s “Apology.”
This reading is all about how Socrates is on trial for acting like an ass and proceeds to act like an ass and so is convicted. Big surprise. On this our inaugural discussion, Mark, Seth, and Wes talk about how philosophers are arrogant bastards who neglect their children, how people of all political stripes don’t usually examine their fundamental beliefs (but probably should), why it might be better to know you know nothing than to only think that you know nothing, and how Plato was a super genius all of whose texts you should worship uncritically. Plus : podcaster philosophical origin stories, like when Wes was bitten by a radioactive Anaxagoras.
To increase your enjoyment, download and read Plato’s Apology.
"I’ve never before heard my work discussed like that, and rarely as intelligently ... I listened to the whole podcast, and felt exalted afterward." -- Arthur Danto
The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don't have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we're talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion. Discuss episodes and provide feedback here or via our Facebook group. You can also e-mail comments to mark@marklint.com or wesalwan@gmail.com.
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