Video: Plato's Phaedrus project statement

2019

This book shows how and why debates in the philosophy of film can be advanced through the study of the role of images in Plato’s dialogues, and, conversely, why Plato studies stands to benefit from a consideration of recent debates in the philosophy of film. Contributions range from a reading of Phaedo as a ghost story to thinking about climate change documentaries through Plato’s account of pleonexia. They suggest how philosophical aesthetics can be reoriented by attending anew to Plato’s deployment of images, particularly images that move. They also show how Plato’s deployment of images is integral to his practice as a literary artist. Contributors are Shai Biderman, David Calhoun, Michael Forest, Jorge Tomas Garcia, Abraham Jacob Greenstine, Paul A. Kottman, Danielle A. Layne, David McNeill, Erik W. Schmidt, Timothy Secret, Adrian Switzer, and Michael Weinman.

Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 2000

The poet gives voice to the action of words as they reach out to attain expression. He observes the dangers inherent in this effort: words can break, can become simply unintelligible. Such broken words can no longer function within the fixed constraints of grammar and thus 'will not stay in place, I Will not stay still'. A.J. Greimas in Structural semantics defined an 'actantial' model of language: 1 If we recall that functions in traditional syntax are but roles played by wordsthe subject being 'the one who performs the action', the object 'the one who suffers it'-then according to such a conception, the proposition as a whole becomes a spectacle to which homo loquens treats himself. For Greimas there lies deep in the heart of language a drama; a drama quite independent of homo loquens and quite external to him/her. There are many ways that language can be said to 'move'. I would like to explore some Platonic variations on this theme. 1

2012

Paideia and Performance, 2023

Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 2000

Words move, music movesOnly in time; but that which is only livingCan only die.Words strain,Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,Will not stay still.T.S. Eliot,Four quartets(Burnt Norton V)The poet gives voice to the action of words as they reach out to attain expression. He observes the dangers inherent in this effort: words can break, can become simply unintelligible. Such broken words can no longer function within the fixed constraints of grammar and thus ‘will not stay in place, | Will not stay still’. A.J. Greimas inStructural semanticsdefined an ‘actantial’ model of language:If we recall that functions in traditional syntax are but roles played by words – the subject being ‘the one who performs the action’, the object ‘the one who suffers it’ – then according to such a conception, the proposition as a whole becomes a spectacle to whichhomo loquenstreats himself.

Few other semantic fields pervade Plato’s oeuvre, from the earliest to the latest works, in such a definitive and ambivalent way as that of mimesis. From the philosophy of language to aesthetics and moral psychology, from metaphysics to cosmology and theology: in a strikingly large array of philosophical subject areas, the semantics of mimesis have crucial significance in Plato. The conference volume “Platonic Mimesis Revisited” offers a comprehensive and context-sensitive re-examination of mimesis in all relevant dialogues. Unlike earlier monographic studies, it brings together a considerable variety of scholarly perspectives from Philosophy and Classics, thus providing a broad tableau of modern approaches to the topic. Reviewed by Lloyd Gerson in BMCR 2022.06.09: "As Pfefferkorn and Spinelli note in their introduction, a central aim of this collection is to broaden the study of imitation in Plato beyond aesthetic questions. Indeed, one way that this book succeeds, in my view, is by showing how even aesthetic questions, including those relating to music, painting, theatre, and dance, for example, cannot be effectively addressed in regard to Plato without reference to the widest possible metaphysical context. [...] All of the essays [...] taken together, bring into focus a concept, that of mimesis, that one might have supposed is not as central as it in fact is in the dialogues." https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2022/2022.06.09/

Revista Primus Vitam No.14, Vol. 2. ISSN 2236-7799., 2023

Plato's dialogues are works of fiction. Although a fiction of a profoundly unique sort. These writings are on the level of unprecedent masterpieces of orchestral composition, with an unrivaled philosophical heart that persists in beating on a tune of its own, even after twenty-three centuries. Unparalleled, such works of fiction are so marvelously crafted that it is not hard to witness them being taken as divine, like an anticipated 'revelation' (Goldschmidt 1949), whose ideas, lest we forget, are presented by fictional characters based either on historical individuals or on the embodiment of cultural practices (Nails 2002). Nevertheless, this divinization, even in Antiquity, on its early but thoroughly development stage with Plotinus, went as far as proposing Plato's dialogues as footsteps toward the divine. Plato himself could have been sanctified in Antiquity, if they were to seriously consider the claims of Ancient sources that Plato was born by the divine intervention of Apollos on his supposedly virgin mother, or others that stated he was born in the year of the 88th Olympics, so that he would have died at the age of 81 in 347 BCE, corresponding to a sacred number in the cult of Apollos (Ferrari 2020). This pattern of divinizing Plato or his supposed ideas in ancient sources can be seen in the remarks of Diogenes Laertius, Apuleius, Olympiodorus, and in the words of the anonymous writer of the Prolegomena to Plato's Philosophy. Astonishingly, this pattern of divinizing ideas that many attributes to Plato emerged even in the last Century, almost in the form of a 'Platonic Church', eclipsing the forementioned divinizing claims from Antiquity.

2007

; Paul M. Churchland, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012; 299 pages (inclusive of a ten-page Preface and a one-page Appendix); $35.00 hardcover; ISBN 978-0-262-01686-5