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381How to play the Platonic flute: Mimêsis and Truth in Republic XIn Heather Reid & Jeremy DeLong (eds.), The Many Faces of Mimesis: Selected Essays from the 2017 Symposium on the Hellenic Heritage of Western Greece (Heritage of Western Greece Series, Book 3)., Parnassos Press. pp. 37-48. 2018.The usual interpretation of Republic 10 takes it as Socrates’ multilevel philosophical demonstration of the untruth and dangerousness of mimesis and its required excision from a well ordered polity. Such readings miss the play of the Platonic mimesis which has within it precisely ordered antistrophes which turn its oft remarked strophes perfectly around. First, this argument, famously concluding to the unreliability of image-makers for producing knowledge begins with two images—the mirror (596e…Read more
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6The Plague: Modern lifePhilosophical Investigations 47 (3): 396-410. 2024.The social structures and thought patterns of the modern world are the fruits of the Enlightenment, which begins by eliminating final causal explanations in favour of purely material and efficient causes. The development and great technical success of Enlightenment procedures has, however, produced a cultural blindness about the good. Camus's novel shows us this cultural blindness through characters who themselves suffer from it; for modern man, it is almost a natural evil—we are born into it. C…Read more
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17Camus and Aristotle on the Art Community and its ErrorsLabyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics 22 (2): 40-59. 2020.The purpose of this paper is to show the agreement of Camus and Aristotle on the cultural function of the art community, in particular their criticism of what should be called barbarian or nihilistic practices of art. Camus' art and criticism have been frequent targets of modern critics, but his point is and would be that such critics have the wrong idea of the purpose of art. His answer to such critics and the parallelism of his ideas with Aristotle's criticism of barbarian culture, show that t…Read more
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382Camus and Aristotle on the Art Community and its ErrorsLabyrinth: An International Journal for Philosophy, Value Theory and Sociocultural Hermeneutics 22 (2): 40. 2021.The purpose of this paper is to show the agreement of Camus and Aristotle on the cultural function of the art community, in particular their criticism of what should be called barbarian or nihilistic practices of art. Camus' art and criticism have been frequent targets of modern critics, but his point is and would be that such critics have the wrong idea of the purpose of art. His answer to such critics and the parallelism of his ideas with Aristotle's criticism of barbarian culture, show that t…Read more
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39Empiricism or Its Dialectical Destruction?International Philosophical Quarterly 61 (2): 139-160. 2021.Pamphilus’ introductory letter opens contradictory ways of reading Hume’s Dialogues. The first, suggested by Pamphilus' claim to be “mere auditor” to the dialogues, which were “deeply imprinted in [his] memory,” is the empiricist reading. This traditional reading could, and has, gone several ways, including to such conclusions as Philo forces upon Cleanthes, shocking Demea; e.g., that the design of the mosquito and other “curious artifices of nature,” which inflict pain and suffering on all, b…Read more
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160Psychology, Character, and Performance in HamletIn Psychology, Character, and Performance in Hamlet. pp. 217-230. 2008.As Shakespeare is closer in time and spirit to medieval psychology than to popular modern explanations of psyche, this article presents a fourfold analysis of ecstasy from Aquinas' Summa Theologiae to examine the characters of the play. I also suggest performance choices which make a variety of these ecstasies of soul more visible.
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28Aristotle and Tolkien: An Essay in Comparative PoeticsChristian Scholar's Review 49 (Number 1 (Fall 2019)). 2019.Both Aristotle and Tolkien are authors of short works seemingly concentrated on one form of literary art. Both works contain references which seem to extend further than that single art and offer insights into the worth and purpose of art more generally. Both men understand the relevant processes of mind of the artist in a similar way, and both distinguish the value of works of art based on their effect on the audience. But Tolkien figures the natural human artistic bent as an elvish strain in u…Read more
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139The Writ against Religious Drama: Frater Taciturnus v. Søren KierkegaardIn Niels Jørgen Cappelørn & Jon Stewart (eds.), Kierkegaard revisited: proceedings from the Conference "Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It", Copenhagen, May 5-9, 1996, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 48-74. 1997.In a very literarily complicated setting, Frater Taciturnus sets a remark about Hamlet not being a Christian tragedy. After unpeeling that literary setting and noting that Taciturnus' remark aims more at Jacob Börne than at Shakespeare, the paper shows how Frater Taciturnus' remark calls into question the religious project of a certain danish author. For, Taciturnus' primary concern is to show that religious drama is not possible, or at least "ought not be." This general law applies to Hamlet …Read more
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122Pagan Politics, War, and the Construction of NomoiIn Plato's Political Philosophy, Vol. 2. pp. 58-71. 1997.The problem Plato sounds from the first lines of LAWS, his final dialogue, might be put in Jean-François Lyotard's term: it is the problem of the differend. Lyotard's position is briefly explained, shown to be applicable to the discussion in several ways (not the least of which is the three different gods appealed to as sources of the laws). We then see how Plato makes a chorus of the differend, resolving Lyotard's modern problem.
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The Anatomy of Truth: Literary Modes as a Kantian Model for Understanding the Openness of Knowledge and Morality to FaithIn Chris L. Firestone & Stephen R. Palmquist (eds.), Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion, Indiana University Press. pp. 90-104. 2006.Kant's famous statement (from the first Critique) that he found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith acknowledges a religious or theological telos to the entire critical project. This article outlines a series of relations of 'knowledge' to 'faith' in the architectonic repetitions with variation that plays from the first Critique through the Religion. Various deployments of 'truth' at each stage presume a kind of 'faith' or trust all the way along. These deployments …Read more
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73Reason, Feeling, and Happiness: Bridging an Ancient/Modern Divide in The PlaguePhilosophy and Literature 43 (2): 350-368. 2019.Camus is defined by many as an absurdist philosopher of revolt. The Plague, however, shows him working rigorously through a well-known division between ancient and modern ethics concerning the relation of reason, feeling and happiness. For Aristotle, the virtues are stable dispositions including affective and intellectual elements. For Kant, one’s particular feelings are either that from which we must abstract to judge moral worth, or are a constant hindrance to proper moral activity. Further,…Read more
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24Love Song for the Life of the Mind: An essay on the purpose of comedyCatholic University of America Press. 2007.Prefaced by an argument that the ancients understood mimesis as fundamental to being human, and art as therefore essential to human moral and intellectual development, this book starts from the problematic status of the (happily ending) Iphigenia in Poetics. How Aristotle must explicate tragedy to hold Iphigenia as the best thus sets up the exploration of comedy. Chapter two shows that comedy aims at the catharsis of desire and sympathy. This analysis is then applied in detail to Aristophanes’…Read more
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128The Augustinianism of Albert Camus' The PlagueHeythrop Journal 61 (3): 471-482. 2020.Camus himself called The Plague his most anti-Christian text, and most theologically oriented readings of the text agree. This paper shows how the sermons of Fr. Paneloux—an Augustine scholar--as well as Dr. Rieux’s mother present an Augustinian picture of love. This love opposes the passionate concupiscence for possession of things with the divine love which wishes for the constant conscious presence of the beloved in the light of the good. Such is possible for us, as Augustine exhibits and h…Read more
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28Augustine and Kierkegaard. Edited by John Doody, Kim Paffenroth, and Helene Tallon Russell (review)American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3): 577-579. 2019.Review of an edited book of articles by various authors, each article on some aspect of both thinkers.
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55Aristotle on Dramatic Musical Composition. By Gregory Scott (review)Ancient Philosophy 39 (1): 248-252. 2019.This is a review of Gregory Scott's book on Aristotle's Poetics, which he argues, with excellent and well-defended reasons, has the much narrow focus of dramatic musical art.
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57Readings of Plato’s Apology of Socrates: Defending The Philosophical Life. Edited by Vivil Valvik Haralden, Olof Pettersson, and Oda E. Wiese Tvedt (review)American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 (1): 177-178. 2019.
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41Socrates as the Mimesis of Piety in RepublicInternational Philosophical Quarterly 58 (3): 243-254. 2018.The absence of any discussion of the virtue of piety in Plato’s Republic has been much remarked, but there are textual clues by which to recognize its importance for Plato’s construction and for the book’s intended effect. This dialogue is Socrates’s repetition, on the day after the first festival of Bendis, of a liturgical action that he undertook—at his own expense, at the “vote” of his “city”—on the previous day. Socrates’s activity in repeating it the next day is an “ethological” mimesis of …Read more
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6Sweet Use: Genre and Performance of The Merchant of VenicePhilosophy and Literature 33 (2): 280-295. 2009.This paper answers the questions ‘what is the Merchant of Venice?’ and ‘how may it accomplish its purpose?’ I argue that the usual treatments of this play are inadequate and show how the play is a comedy through which the passions appropriate for the good human being are engendered. What is raised and ridiculed are our own temptations to lesser joys and less sweet uses mimetically roused in us by the action and characters of the play. What is whetted but left unsatisfied is our higher love fo…Read more
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33Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions (review)Faith and Philosophy 21 (3): 402-406. 2004.
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58Socrates and the Gods: How to Read Plato's Euthyphro, Apology and Crito. By Nalin Ranasinghe (review)American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88 (1): 187-189. 2014.
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265Libidinal Economy and the Life of LogosPhilosophy and Literature 18 (2): 320-325. 1994.This paper brings Lyotard into connection with the discussions of Socrates in REPUBLIC concerning general libidinal economy and its relation to the logos in human beings. Since desire is always the desire to be amoral -- not to recognize the person as subject, but rather recognizing it as a market for the capital gain of desire, it is to be suspected that desire within the subject is the cause of so-called differends between subjects. This is what Republic is about.
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19For what May I Hope?: Thinking with Kant and KierkegaardPeter Lang. 1990.This book exhibits the centrality of hope in Kant's critical philosophy, and brings into question the rationality of that hope, and how the question of that rationality can be raised. The question of the rationality of hope is further explored through Kierkegaard's writing.
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99The Others In/Of Aristotle’s PoeticsJournal of Philosophical Research 22 245-260. 1997.This paper aims at interpreting (primarily) the first six chapters of Aristotle’s Poetics in a way that dissolves many of the scholarly arguments conceming them. It shows that Aristotle frequently identifies the object of his inquiry by opposing it to what is other than it (in several different ways). As a result aporiai arise where there is only supposed to be illuminating exclusion of one sort or another. Two exemplary cases of this in chapters 1-6 are Aristotle’s account of mimesis as other t…Read more
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87Plato’s Mimetic Art: The Power of the Mimetic and Complexity of Reading PlatoProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 84 239-252. 2010.Plato’s dialogues are self-defined as works of mimetic art, and the ancients clearly consider mimesis as working naturally before reason and beneath it. Such aview connects with two contemporary ideas—Rene Girard’s idea of the mimetic basis of culture and neurophysiological research into mirror neurons. Individualityarises out of, and can collapse back into our mimetic origin. This para-rational notion of mimesis as that in which and by which all our knowledge is framed requires we not only conc…Read more
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26Intentionality and Mimesis: Canonic Variations on an Ancient Grudge, Scored for New MutiniesSubstance 23 (3): 46. 1994.The thesis of this text is that representation and mimesis, and so reason and passion, are not opposed, but differ. Their presumed opposition leads to many false and therefore harmful ideas and practices, as Glaucon exhibits in his republic, but even these harmful ideas and practices exhibit not only that it is not possible to escape either mimesis or representation but also that the harm is precisely to develop a culture along the lines of a hegemonic structure wherein one is dominant and the …Read more
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186Comic Cure for Delusional Democracy: Plato's RepublicLexington Books. 2014.In this book, author Gene Fendt shows how Plato's Republic provides a liturgical purification for the political and psychic delusions of democratic readers, even as Socrates provides the same for his interlocutors at the festival of Bendis. Each of the several characters is analyzed in accord with Book Eight's 6 geometrically possible kinds of character showing how their answers and failures in the dialogue exhibit the particular kind of movement and blindness predictable for the type
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Werner Hamacher, Premises: Essays on Philosophy and Literature from Kant to Celan (review)International Journal of Philosophical Studies 7 (1): 128-129. 1999.
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284Sweet use: Genre and performance of the merchant of venicePhilosophy and Literature 33 (2). 2009.This paper answers the questions ‘what is the Merchant of Venice?’ and ‘how may it accomplish its purpose?’ I argue that the usual treatments of this play are inadequate and show how the play is a comedy through which the passions appropriate for the good human being are engendered. What is raised and ridiculed are our own temptations to lesser joys and less sweet uses mimetically roused in us by the action and characters of the play. What is whetted but left unsatisfied is our higher love fo…Read more
Kearney, Nebraska, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Classical Greek Philosophy |
Immanuel Kant |
Søren Kierkegaard |
Philosophy of Literature |
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
3 more
Philosophy of Religion |
Aesthetics |
Immanuel Kant |
Søren Kierkegaard |
Philosophy of Literature |
Augustine |
Anselm |
Thomas Aquinas |