EpochPub Date : 2015-02-19DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE2014121729
S. Jansen
{"title":"Audience Psychology and Censorship in Plato’s Republic: The Problem of the Irrational Part","authors":"S. Jansen","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE2014121729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE2014121729","url":null,"abstract":"In Republic X the “problem of the irrational part” is this: Greek tragedy interacts with non-reasoning elements of the soul, affecting audiences in ways that undermine their reasoned views about virtue and value. I suggest that the common construal of Socrates’s critique of Greek tragedy is inadequate, in that it belies key elements of Plato’s audience psychology; specifically, (1) the crucial role of the spirited part and (2) the audience’s cognitive contribution to spectatorship. I argue that Socrates’s emphasis on the audience’s cognitive contribution to spectatorship allows him to anticipate a non-authoritarian solution to the problem of the irrational part. In Plato’s Republic Socrates infamously proposes a censorship program of stunning magnitude and ruthless scope, extending from Greek drama and literature to architecture, pottery, and even children’s games. Socrates bans or severely censors the entire Greek literary cannon. Plato’s interest in authoritarian “cultural catharsis” is real and enduring, resurfacing prominently in the Laws.1 In this paper I do not defend censorship. Instead, I point to the problem that ultimately motivates Plato’s censorship program—what I call “the problem of the irrational part.” Put simply, the problem is this: tragedy interacts with non-reasoning elements of the human psyche, affecting audiences in ways that undermine their reasoned views about value and virtue. In what follows, I focus on the neglected final book of the Republic (Republic X), wherein Socrates recruits his tripartite psychology to remake the case for censorship—in effect banning comedy and tragedy and banishing the “leader of the tragedians,” Homer. In Republic X, Socrates charges tragedy with appealing to the irrational (ἀνόητον, ἀλόγιστον) part of the soul—i.e., spirit (τὸ θυμοειδής) and appetite","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116975036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2013-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201317212
Ömer Aygün
{"title":"On Bees and Humans: Phenomenological Explorations of Hearing Sounds, Voices, and Speech in Aristotle","authors":"Ömer Aygün","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201317212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201317212","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes a solution to the apparent contradiction between Aristotle's positions concerning the bees' ability to hear in the Metaphysics and in the History of Animals. It does so not by appealing to external (chronological or philological) emendations, but by disambiguating the Ancient Greek verb akouein into three meanings: hearing of sound (psophos), of voice (phone) and of speech (logos). Such a differentiation shows that, according to Aristotle, bees do hear other bees' intermittent buzzes as meaningful and interested calls for cooperation. This differentiation also hints toward the specificity of human communication and community.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124254510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015232
C. Zuckert
{"title":"Socrates and Timaeus: Two Platonic Paradigms of Philosophy","authors":"C. Zuckert","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015232","url":null,"abstract":"Plato's Timaeus is usually taken to be a sequel to the Republic which shows the cosmological basis of Plato's politics. In this article I challenge the traditional understanding by arguing that neither Critias's nor Timaeus's speech performs the assigned function. The contrast between Timaeus's monologue and the silently listening Socrates dramatizes the philosophical differences between investigations of \"the human things\", like those conducted by Socrates, and attempts to demonstrate the intelligible, mathematically calculable order of the sensible natural world, like that of Timaeus.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"210 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125304089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015235
Benjamin A. Rider
{"title":"Self-Care, Self-Knowledge, and Politics in the Alcibiades I","authors":"Benjamin A. Rider","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015235","url":null,"abstract":"In the Alcibiades I, Socrates argues for the importance of self-knowledge. Recent interpreters contend that the self-knowledge at issue here is knowledge of an impersonal and purely rational self. I argue against this interpretation and advance an alternative. First, the passages proponents of this interpretation cite-Socrates' argument that the self is the soul, and his suggestion that Alcibiades seek self-knowledge by looking for his soul's reflection in the soul of another-do not unambiguously support their reading. Moreover, other passages, particularly Socrates' cross-examination of Alcibiades, suggest the contrary reading, that self-knowledge includes knowledge of qualities peculiar to the individual.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125704288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015237
Rebecca Steiner Goldner
{"title":"Touch and Flesh in Aristotle’s de Anima","authors":"Rebecca Steiner Goldner","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015237","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I argue for the sense of touch as primary in Aristotle's account of sensation. Touch, as the identifying and inaugurating distinction of sensate beings, is both of utmost importance to Aristotle as well as highly aporetic on his explanation. The issue of touch and the problematic of flesh, in particular, bring us to Merleau-Ponty's account of flesh as the chiasmic fold and overlap of subject and object, of self and other, and to an incipient and veiled knowledge present in the body's orientation to and within the world.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126321278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015227
Kalliopi Nikolopoulou
{"title":"Parrhesia as Tragic Structure in Euripides' Bacchae","authors":"Kalliopi Nikolopoulou","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015227","url":null,"abstract":"This paper considers Foucault's remarks on Euripides and parrhesia in order to reflect on the deeper relation between tragic speech and truth-telling. It ar- gues that: a) tragedy is a privileged mode of truth-telling, since the tragic fall always involves the hero's passion for truth; and b) parrhesia is inherently tragic, insofar as it endangers its agent. By focusing on the Bacchae, which Foucault sidesteps, I maintain that this play exemplifies the tragic structure of parrhesiastic conduct, while staging the passage of parrhesia from the temple to the city, and thus also from religion to politics and philosophy.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"104 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125563748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015234
J. Bell
{"title":"Empeiria kai Tribē: Plato on the “Art” of Flattery in Rhetoric and Sophistry","authors":"J. Bell","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015234","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay I trace the terms empeiria and tribe throughout the Platonic corpus in order to expose their central position within Plato's critique of the sophists and rhetoricians. I find that these two terms-both of which indicate a knack or habitude that has been developed through experiential familiarity with certain causal tendencies-are regularly deployed in order to account for the effectiveness of these speakers even in the absence of a technē; for, what Plato identifies with these terms is the sophists' and rhetoricians' near masterful familiarity with and ability to manipulate the doxa and the dogma of the many, hoi poloi.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132200131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015231
E. Halper
{"title":"Humor, Dialectic, and Human Nature in Plato","authors":"E. Halper","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015231","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing principally on the Symposium, this paper argues that humor in Plato's dialogues serves two serious purposes. First, Plato uses puns and other devices to disarm the reader's defenses and thereby allow her to consider philosophical ideas that she would otherwise dismiss. Second, insofar as human beings can only be un- derstood through unchanging forms that we fail to attain, our lives are discontinuous and only partly intelligible. Since, though, the discontinuity between expectation and actual occurrence is the basis for humor, Plato can use humor to express who we are as human beings.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"249 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123593733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015229
Burt C. Hopkins
{"title":"The Unwritten Teachings in Plato’s Symposium: Socrates’ Initiation into the Ἀριϴμός of Ἔρως","authors":"Burt C. Hopkins","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015229","url":null,"abstract":"The paper argues that the ontology of Self behind Descartes's paradigmatic modern account of passion is an obstacle to interpreting properly the account Socrates gives in the Symposium of the truth of Eros's origin, nature, and gift to the philosophical initiate into his truth. The key to interpreting this account is located in the relation between Eros and the arithmos-structure of the community of kinds,which is disclosed in terms of the Symposium's dramatic mimesis of the two Platonic sources of being, the One Itself and the indeterminate dyad. This interpretation's focus is the vulgar and philosophical dimensions of the phallic pun at the beginning of the dialogue. Both dimensions of the dialogue's opening joke manifest the appearance of Eros in the dialogue as a distorted imitation of the koirtonia of the greatest kinds: Being, Rest, Motion, the Same, and the Other.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"233 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117195975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EpochPub Date : 2011-10-01DOI: 10.5840/EPOCHE201015233
Christopher P. Long
{"title":"Crisis of Community: The Topology of Socratic Politics in the Protagoras","authors":"Christopher P. Long","doi":"10.5840/EPOCHE201015233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/EPOCHE201015233","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":202733,"journal":{"name":"Epoch","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130673391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}