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497The 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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54How 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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14The 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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24Camus 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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583Camus 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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50Empiricism 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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229Psychology, 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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36Aristotle 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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219The Writ against Religious Drama: Frater Taciturnus v. Søren KierkegaardIn Niels Jørgen Cappelørn & Jon Bartley 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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196Pagan 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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82Reason, 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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26Love 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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136The 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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35Augustine 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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63Aristotle 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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62Readings 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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47Socrates 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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72The (Moral) Problem of Reading ConfessionsProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 72 171-184. 1998.In Augustine's Confessions we can find two arguments against drama. One of them is entirely Platonic, echoing the problems raised in Republic 2 and 3 that representations of evil encourage moral turpitude. The other, which can be found in Republic 10, is much more visible in Confessions, and Augustine is more perspicuous than Plato in laying out the difficulty; it has to do with the immoral effect of suffering grief at staged sufferings, where we are moved neither to escape the suffering nor t…Read more
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43Platonic errors: Plato, a kind of poetGreenwood Press. 1998.Poetic and dramatic readings of selected Platonic dialogues show the fallacy of the philosophical and political positions usually attributed to Plato. Dialogues dealt with include Apology, Meno, Ion, Republic, Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Laws.
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82God Is Love, Therefore There Is EvilPhilosophy and Theology 9 (1-2): 3-12. 1995.This paper attempts to explicate the philosophical and theological premisses involved in Fr. Paneloux’s second sermon in Camus’ The Plague. In that sermon Fr. Paneloux says that the suffering of children is our bread of affliction. The article shows where one must start in order to get to that point, and what follows from it. Whether or not the argument given should be called a theodicy or a reductio ad absurdum of religious belief is an open question for a philosopher, but the argument is shown…Read more
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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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66Socrates 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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2897IonInternational Studies in Philosophy 29 (4): 23-50. 1997.This reading of Plato's Ion shows that the philosophic action mimed and engendered by the dialogue thoroughly reverses its (and Plato's) often supposed philosophical point, revealing that poetry is just as defensible as philosophy, and only in the same way. It is by Plato's indirections we find true directions out: the war between philosophy and poetry is a hoax on Plato's part, and a mistake on the part of his literalist readers. The dilemma around which the dialogue moves is false, and would…Read more
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75Confessions’Bliss: Postmodern Criticism as a Palimpsest of Augustine's ConfessionsHeythrop Journal 36 (1): 30-45. 1995.This paper reads through some contemporary literary critical problems and theorizing about textuality to Augustine's Confessions, to the enrichment, if not the ecstasy of both contemporary and medieval thinking. It shows that Augustine is both aware of much that passes as new in theorizing about language, and that his text is argumentatively and rhetorically structured to set difference at play. Like Augustine's writing, this article is a performance piece: besides arguing, it acknowledges; be…Read more
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671The 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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110Plato’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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103Hippias major, version 1.0: Software for post-colonial, multicultural technology systemsJournal of Philosophy of Education 37 (1). 2003.The first half of Plato’s Hippias Major exhibits the interfacing of the first teacher (Socrates) with the first version of a post-colonial, multi-cultural information technology system (Hippias). In this interface the purposes, results, and values of two contradictory types of operating system for educational servicing units are exhibited to, and can be discovered by, anyone who is not an information technologist.
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 |