EAST LANSING, MI It was particularly poignant for me to give a paper on the nature of Socratic political community at the tenth annual meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society.
The APS has been for me a professional community of education of rich fecundity and enormous depth. The values the Society embodies and the spirit of friendship in which philosophy is pursued here stands as an example of what is possible when scholars enter into relation with one another committed at once to attending to the letter of the ancient texts and to responding the demands of the contemporary social, political and historical situation.
The paper I presented focused on the manner in which Alcibiades functions as a phantom of Hermes as he intervenes of behalf of Socrates in his conversation with Protagoras in Plato’s Protagoras. I try to develop an account of how Socrates is willing to enter into direct relation with those he engages in dialogue and specifically with those young people, like Hippocrates in the Protagoras, intent on learning what it means to be just and good.
Ryan Drake and I discussed the paper on episode 31 of the Digital Dialogue.
Listen to episode 31 of the Digital Dialogue here.
I also recorded my reading of the paper, the response from Anne-Marie Bowery and the questions from the APS audience for episode 32 of the Digital Dialogue.
Digital
Dialogue 32: Christopher Long at APS 2010: The Topology of Socratic Politics
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