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David
O'Connor
Associate
Professor of Philosophy and Concurrent Associate Professor
of Classics
University
of Notre Dame
Personal
webpage
"Rewriting
the Poets in Plato's Characters"
Plato's
Republic is notorious for its censorship of the poets,
especially Homer and Hesiod. But Plato also appropriates these
poets for his own purposes. In particular, he uses Homer's
account of Odysseus's descent to the underworld and Hesiod's
account of the Ages of Man to give structure to the Republic
and to characterize Socrates' main partners in the dialogue,
Plato's own brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus. This mythic aspect
of the Republic casts a distinctive light on many puzzling
aspects of the dialogue that mere analysis of its arguments
is bound to ignore.
This
lecture is co-sponsored by
Dipartimento
di Studi Greci e Latini, Università degli Studi di Palermo |
