Monday, November 14, 2011
A. interest in endurance of the suffering hero
B. reduction in choral role
C. hero still stubborn, self-willed, remaining true to inborn nature against persuasion
A. story pattern of withdrawn hero whose services are needed
B. bow as a talisman needed for capture of Troy
C. force, persuasion, and deception
D. civilization and savagery: fire, shelter, war with beasts vs. friendship, xenia, pledges, social context of polis/army
A. Odysseus
1. cultural paradigm of adaptability, positively viewed in Odyssey, but strongly contrasted to aristocratic ethos of stable inborn nature in many myths and literary works
2. image of politician serving the assembly: note 6, 50ff., 78ff., 98ff., 990, 1047ff.
B. Philoctetes
1. old-style hero, 330ff., 415ff.
2. relationship to Herakles: help and friendship
3. the bow: 652ff.
4. help friends/harm enemies dilemma, similar to Achilles’
C. Neoptolemus
1. as ephebe: apprenticeship, hunting, use of deception
2. as son of Achilles: note assumptions made by Odysseus in 100ff. and by Philoctetes
3. added to story by Sophocles, versions of Aeschylus and Euripides used only Odysseus
4. struggle for his soul
a. audience’s uncertainty about when he is being sincere in sympathy
b. admiration of bow; care for Phil. when attacked by sickness
c. aporia (uncertainty what to do, puzzlement): 839ff., 895ff.
d. Odysseus’ temporary triumph
e. Neoptolemus’ return of the bow
A. lack of clarity about oracles
B. mixture of truth and falsehood
1. loss of arms of Achilles: 345ff. vs. 1364
2. pursuit of Neoptolemus: 561 vs. 1240-1254
3. Neoptolemus tries to keep a promise that he made while lying
C. persuasion fails with Philoctetes, until deus ex machina appears
D. optimistic and pessimistic interpretations of ending
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
A. public life
1. hoplite service (Poteidaea, Amphipolis, Delion)
2. council service: chairman of assembly at trail of the generals after naval battle of Arginousai in 406
3 summoned for collaboration by the Thirty in 404
B. association with wealthy young men, conversations with prominent persons (oracle about being wisest)
C. indirect knowledge of his ideas
1. Aristophanes’ Clouds
2. Xenophon
3. Plato
4. other writers of Socratic dialogues
D. Socrates’ interests
1. knowledge, definition: analogy of crafts to politics, morality, art of living well
2. "give an account": examination, cross-examination (elenchos), dialectic (vs. eristic); eironeia (irony: adopting a pose of less knowledge or status than you are entitled to); aporia (puzzlement)
3. "the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being" (Apology 38a)
E. Socratic paradoxes: inspiration of much of later philosophy, Greek and later
1. the unity of virtue
2. virtue is knowledge
3. no one does evil knowingly
A. political prosecution based on his association with Alcibiades, Critias, Charmides, and others
B. since political charges not allowed after amnesty in 403, enemies use other charges: "introducing new gods" (or not believing in the gods of the city), and "corrupting the young"
C. Socrates’ daimonion (divine signal, restraining him from action)
D. refusal to go into exile or escape from prison: Crito on obedience to city’s laws
A. uncompromising tone, demonstration of Socratic technique of argument
B. Socrates’ "wisdom" as a source of notoriety and hostility
1. the oracle and the quest (modeling on heroic labors) (20e-23a)
2. service to the god, assisting the god (23b)
3. human wisdom vs. divine wisdom: knowing one’s own ignorance (20d, 23a-b)
C. corrupting the young
1. use of elenchos with accuser: comparing other situations (e.g. horse training), is it likely that S. alone corrupts the young and all others improve the young? (24c-25b)
2. is it believable that S. intentionally harms himself by corrupting those with whom he associates? (25c-26a)
D. atheism: elenchos in terms of definitions and classes
1. belief in some gods and not others (26b-e)
2. daimonia but not daimones (divine things but not divinities) (27a-e)
E. no fear of death
1. death unimportant compared to acting justly and honorably (comparison to Achilles) (28b-29b)
2. bad man cannot harm a good man (30c-d)
3. rejection of begging and pleading, insistence on maintaining dignity and reputation, sticking to facts of case (34c-35d)
F. penalty phase speech
1. Socrates as benefactor of citizens (36b-37a)
2. unexamined life (38a)
G. restatement of D in final remarks
1. joining the heroes (if there is an afterlife)
2. nothing can harm a good man
A. early life: wealthy aristocratic family, with politically active members; experience of war and democracy
B. association with Socrates
C. the Thirty Tyrants (included uncles Critias and Charmides)
D. the trial and condemnation of Socrates (399): Plato travels abroad 399-388
E. Academy: public gymnasium used as meeting-place by a school founded by Plato early in 4th cent.; philosophical school for about 5 centuries; Aristotle a student and associate there 367-347
F. involvement in Sicilian politics: friend/teacher of Dion of Syracuse; tutor of tyrant Dionysios II of Syracuse (second visit to Sicily 366-361)
Friday, November 18, 2011
A. physical world full of change (cf. Heracleitus): permanence, truth and reality must be sought elsewhere
B. genesis (becoming) vs. ousia (existence)
C. doxa (opinion) vs. epistêmê (knowledge)
D. identification of immortal soul (psychê) with what a person really is: theory of tripartite soul; background of soul-beliefs in Pythagoreanism and other special cults
E. Platonic Forms (Ideas): the objects of real knowledge, the things that really exist, the cause of qualities imperfectly or temporarily instantiated in physical world
F. anamnêsis (recalling, remembering): Meno and Phaedrus
A. Apollodorus narrating to unknown audience (love of Socratic conversations) (172a-173e)
B. had just gone over the story recently when he met Glaukon on the road
C. what he told Glaukon was Aristodemus’ account to him (Aristodemus shoeless 173b: motif of shoelessness) (174a-178a)
D. within Socrates’ speech, most of the positive claims are within his report of how he was taught by Diotima (this fits Socrates’ ironic stance)
E. different approaches to question, reversals and revisions, partial truths taken up in fuller account as discussion proceeds
A. traditional authority of poetry (Eros among oldest gods), traditional aristocratic ethics (sense of shame, sense of the fine and noble)
B. homosexual erôs as reinforcement of ethics of shame and honor
C. examples of Alcestis and Achilles (dying for the lover)
A. divides Aphrodite and Eros into two (compare Hesiod on Eris): Pandemos and Ourania
B. hierarchy of values: male above female; mind (intelligence) over body (lust)
C. double standard applying to lover and boy; odd behavior tolerated in love situation that would not be tolerated otherwise (cf. Plato, Phaedrus)
D. moral improvement, but only in the better kind of love
A. wider view of Eros, as many kinds of desire and attraction in nature; medical slant
B. Eros governs medicine and many other arts and activities
C. good Eros connected to all matters characterized by correctness and good measure, bad Eros to excesses, disorder (key idea, but just asserted without adequate justification)
A. Eros as agent of cure for human distress
B. mythological fantasy of man’s original wholeness and suffering from separation
C. love as seeking restoration of physical wholeness, but also claimed that more than physical union is sought: soul desires something it can’t really express
A. overtly sophistic in self-consciousness of rhetorical task, and in Gorgianic style (esp. 197d), and in extremity of position adopted
B. extreme argument, utmost praise: Eros is young and beautiful
C. Eros has all virtues, is responsible for all goods
A. rejection of Agathon’s method: hyperbole and disregard for truth
B. elenchos to show Eros is characterized by lack, lacks beauty and the good
C. Diotima (201d-212a)
1. Eros as intermediary between the good and the bad, fair and ugly, wisdom and ignorance (child of Poros = resource and Penia = poverty; barefoot 203d)
2. lover seeks something, ultimately wisdom and the good (final goal, teleology), pursuit of immortality through offspring
3. physical vs. mental analogous to women vs. boys as erotic object
4. ladder of ascent in objects of desire (210a-212b)
a. physical attraction to one body
b. love of all beautiful bodies
c. love of beauty in soul more than beauty in body
d. love of beauty in laws/customs and practices
e. love of knowledge
f. vision of the Form of beauty that is eternal and whole (211)
A. example of a person who has made wrong choices in life, has failed to follow impulses toward the beautiful and the good because of preference for other values; symbolism of drunkenness
B. praise of Socrates in lieu of praise of Eros: motif of barefootedness (220b); status as daimon
C. analogy to Silenos: ugly exterior, gods within (215a-b)
D. analogy to Marsyas (Silenos-like or satyr-like demigod, famed for playing the aulos-pipes): enchantment by words and arguments
E. Socrates and self-restraint: contempt for what most men value; offers true beauty and true leadership toward the right form of life