Tag Archives: Socrates

Self-Satire’s Medicinal Properties

In “Wonderworks,” Fletcher contends that self-satire helped Socrates deal with death.

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Authoritarians Long to Act with Impunity

Authoritarians long to act with impunity. H.G. Wells captures this fantasy in “The Invisible Man.”

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Figaro vs. Kafka’s K: The Power of Rumor

In our continuing discussion of rumor vs. truth, Figaro finds a way to defeat malicious gossip, Kafka not.

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Why Conspiracy Theories Beat Logic

Philosopher Mladen Dolar cites Socrates and Hamlet to explain why conspiracy theories are so resistant to logic.

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Plato’s Warning: Beware of Poets

While Plato advocated banning poets from the ideal republic, his censure works as an indirect testimony to literature’s power.

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Finding Hope in a Captured Fish

Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” works as a powerful meditation on hope.

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Answer the Door, Child–Truth is Knocking

We had our major awards ceremony this past Saturday. As is tradition, we began with a poem by Lucille Clifton that she allowed us to adapt slightly for the occasion.Our president then gave one of his patented speeches, this one centered on Plato’s Meno. It was exactly what I wanted our students to hear: a full-blown defense of the liberal arts.

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Final Instructions from a Dying Teacher

Last Thursday we had our memorial service for my friend Alan Paskow, the philosophy colleague whom I have written about several times. In my own remarks I invoked Plato’s Crito. I said that, for the three-plus years that Alan lived with the diagnosis of a terminal illness, he was like Socrates after having drunk the hemlock He knew that he was dying but he used his illness as an opportunity to explore with others what it meant. Like Socrates, he was a teacher to the end.

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