Contact Professor Wolfgang Mann for more info.
Abstract. The Noble Lie proposed by Plato for the Just City in Republic III has been much misunderstood. Its agenda is twofold: to get the citizens of the City to see their society as a natural entity, with themselves as all ‘family’ and akin; and to get the Guardians in particular to make class mobility, on which the justice of the City depends, a top priority. Since the second is taken to depend on the first, the Lie passage amounts to an argument (1) that the survival of a just community depends on the existence of social solidarity between elite and mass, which allows for full class mobility and genuine meritocracy; (2) that this solidarity in turn depends on an ideology of natural unity; and (3) that such ideologies are always false. So the Lie really is a lie, but a necessary one; as such it poses an awkward ethical problem for Plato and, if he is right, for our own societies as well.
Presented by SWIP-NYC
What makes right acts right? A Stoic answer to Ross’s question.
When W.D. Ross poses the question, “what makes right acts right?” (The Right and the Good ch. 2), he is asking a question that is prior to the deliberative question, “how do I determine the right thing to do?” The Stoics recognize this: in De Officiis 1.7, Cicero says that every inquiry about duty has two parts: (1) a theoretical part concerned with the end of goods and evils, which addresses such matters as whether all duties are perfect, whether some are more important than others, and what are the kinds of duties, and (2) a practical part which sets out rules (praecepta) by which our conduct can be made to conform with the end. This paper focuses on (1) and in particular asks Ross’s question about Stoic right actions (kathêkonta).
The endpoint of Stoic deliberation is determining what token action is the right action. The paper begins with the Stoic distinction between a thing’s choiceworthiness, its intrinsic disposition to elicit a choice response in a suitable subject, and its possession being to-be-chosen. The determination of what is to-be-done is made by weighing against each other all the values of the relevant action types specified by their content (the so-called ‘intermediate actions’) that are in accordance with nature, as Stoic value theory says that according with nature is an objective reason to do an action. What constitutes the rightness of the token right action, and is given in its reasonable defense, is the same as what constitutes the rightness of a perfect (katorthôma) action. The Stoic distinction between right and perfect action depends on the action’s moral goodness—not rightness—which is due to its causal origin.
Presented by Professor Rachana Kamtekar (Cornell University)
Book discussion on Gwenda-lin Grewal’s, Thinking About Death in Plato’s Euthydemus. A Close Reading and New Translation (OUP 2022)
Speakers:
Gwenda-lin Grewal (NSSR)
Cinzia Arruzza (NSSR)
Nicholas Pappas (CUNY)
Thinking of Death places Plato’s Euthydemus among the dialogues that surround the trial and death of Socrates. A premonition of philosophy’s fate arrives in the form of Socrates’ encounter with the two-headed sophist pair, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who appear as if they are the ghost of the Socrates of Aristophanes’ Thinkery. The pair vacillate between choral ode and rhapsody, as Plato vacillates between referring to them in the dual and plural number in Greek. Gwenda-lin Grewal’s close reading explores how the structure of the dialogue and the pair’s back-and-forth arguments bear a striking resemblance to thinking itself: in its immersive remove from reality, thinking simulates death even as it cannot conceive of its possibility. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus take this to an extreme, and so emerge as the philosophical dream and sophistic nightmare of being disembodied from substance. The Euthydemus is haunted by philosophy’s tenuous relationship to political life. This is played out in the narration through Crito’s implied criticism of Socrates-the phantom image of the Athenian laws-and in the drama itself, which appears to take place in Hades. Thinking of death thus brings with it a lurid parody of the death of thinking: the farce of perfect philosophy that bears the gravity of the city’s sophistry. Grewal also provides a new translation of the Euthydemus that pays careful attention to grammatical ambiguities, nuances, and wit in ways that substantially expand the reader’s access to the dialogue’s mysteries.
2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop, and the beginning of a sonic, cultural and socio-political revolution that changed the U.S. and the world. To commemorate the anniversary, Brooklyn Public Library will present NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY: THE PHILOSOPHY OF HIP-HOP on Saturday, June 17th, from 7 pm – 2 am at Central Library.
Join us for this FREE event that will take over the entire Central Library building to celebrate hip-hop culture past, present and future, with keynote addresses, live DJs, film screenings, discussions, debates and contemplative engagements. BPL invites you to celebrate hip-hop and spend a NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY.
Co-curated by LeBrandon Smith and Kelly Harrison. The Dilemma Series is curated by April R. Silver, founder of AKILA WORKSONGS.
When W.D. Ross poses the question “what makes right acts right?” (The Right and the Good, ch. 2), he is asking a question that is prior to, and has a bearing on, the practical question “how do I determine the right thing to do?” The Stoics recognize this. Cicero (De Officio, where he is referring to Panaetius’ work Peri Kathêkontos) tells us that every inquiry about duty has two parts: (1) a theoretical part concerned with the end of good and evil deeds, which addresses such matters as whether all duties are perfect (omniane official perfecta sint), whether some are more important than others, and what the kinds of duties are, and (2) a practical part which sets out rules (praecepta) by which our conduct can be made to conform with the end (De Officiis, 1.7). While Cicero himself focuses on the second, this paper seeks the answer to the first part.
Rachana Kamtekar is a Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Cornell University and has written on many topics in ancient philosophy and contemporary moral psychology. Her monograph, Plato’s Moral Psychology: Intellectualism, the Divided Soul and the Desire for Good, was published in 2017. She is currently working on the relationship between action and character in ancient Greek ethics.
Nietzsche (1844-1900) is one of the few philosophers who have an intimate connection to music. This connection has much to do with his early music education. His contemporaries testify that he was a good pianist. His musical ambition, or his musical daimon, urged him to compose music, although he had no training in this area. Most of his compositions are from his late teens; his earliest inspirations are Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Schumann and Wagner. His compositions were gathered together and published by Curt Paul Janz in Friedrich Nietzsche, Der musikalische Nachlass. Nietzsche’s music is available in several productions. However, Nietzsche did not follow a musical path and decided to become a philologist and dedicated his life to writing and philosophy.
Nietzsche’s background in music, on the other hand, influenced his way of thinking and writing. All of these interesting areas between music, literature, and philosophy and Nietzsche’s relationship to music understood on a broad spectrum have been explored by many Nietzsche scholars including Georges Liébert, Graham Parkes, Francois Noudelmann, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and others and in the anthology, An Anthology on Nietzsche and Music: Philosophical Thoughts and Musical Experiments, edited by the presenters of today’s event. This event is dedicated to the exploration of this relationship between Nietzsche and music.
Verity Harte is a specialist in ancient philosophy, with particular research interests in ancient metaphysics, epistemology and psychology, especially of Plato and Aristotle. She is the author of Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure, and is the editor of several important books on ancient philosophy.