•  6
    Russon's Method of Authorless Description
    Symposium 27 (2): 108-133. 2023.
    In this article, I present John Russon’s phenomenological method of authorless description. I trace this method to Russon’s engagement with Aristotle, Hegel, and Heidegger. Speci????ically, I claim that he is informed by Aristotle’s practice of accounting for appearances, Hegel’s method of presuppositionless science, and Heidegger’s project of preparation to “let being be.” I apply this to Russon’s book, Sites of Exposure, and his account of both the human need to transcend the home towards an o…Read more
  •  10
    Homer and Modern Oral Poetry: Some Confusions
    Classical Quarterly 10 (3-4): 271-. 1960.
    One of the curious things about Homeric studies is the way in which, although opinions in this field fluctuate violently, from time to time certain among them tend to become crystallized for no particular reason and are then accepted as something approaching orthodoxy. It is to try to delay such a crystallization, if it is not already too late, that I direct this brief coup d'ail at some current opinions on whether Homer—for the sake of clarity I apply this name in the first instance to the monu…Read more
  •  2
    In this interpretive commentary on Theaetetus, Gregory Kirk makes a major contribution to scholarship on Plato by emphasizing the relevance of the interpersonal dynamics between the interlocutors for the interpretation of the dialogue’s central arguments about knowledge. Kirk attends closely to the personalities of the participants in the dialogue, focusing especially on the unique demands faced by a student—in this case, Theaetetus—and the ways in which one can embrace or deflect the responsibi…Read more
  •  22
    In this paper, I perform an analysis of Aristotle’s organic analogy when discussing the different “organs” of the Greek polis. I argue that this analysis demonstrates that the proper functioning of the polis depends upon the generation of different forms of life that will incline towards tension with one another, due to the fact that some members will be prevented by their form of life from enjoying the chief virtue of political life, namely, the accomplishment of human virtue and the good life.…Read more
  •  85
    Misreading the Unparticipated Source of Difference in Deleuze's Reversal of Platonism
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (1): 205-225. 2013.
    In this article, I argue that in his “reversal of Platonism” in The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze does not adequately consider in what sense Plotinus identifies The One as “unparticipated.” I further claim that when The One is understood in the sense I consider Plotinus to have presented it, it shows itself to have attributes similar to Deleuze’s “dark precursor,” insofar as both The One and the dark precursor are ineffable, are inexhaustible, and contain absolute generative power. I propose th…Read more
  •  15
    Bakhtin, Dewey, and the Diminishing Domain of Shared Experience
    Contemporary Pragmatism 12 (2): 216-231. 2015.
    This paper uses John Dewey's accounts of education, expression, and art to argue that the relegation of artistic expression to the private sphere in fact, paradoxically, undermines the opportunities for human beings to cultivate their own individual autonomy. Insofar as cultural objects are matters of artistic expression, they have the special quality of potentially drawing the attention of the public to their created and contingent character, provided that they are created in a self-consciously…Read more
  •  23
    Initiation, Extraction, and Transformation
    Idealistic Studies 45 (1). 2015.
    In this paper, I provide an account of what is frequently called Socrates’s “method,” and, more specifically, of what one is being asked by Socrates when he asks “what is x?” I argue that one is being asked to change one’s life, and to orient one’s life around the pursuit of wisdom. To answer Socrates’s question is to subject oneself to a process of extracting from oneself one’s accumulated prejudices; doing so requires one to abandon, not just ideas that have been demonstrated to be false, but …Read more