Robert Metcalf

The dramatic and thematic attention to shame in Plato's Gorgias invites readers to examine the relation between the Greek experience of shame [aidos, aischune] and philosophical logos, especially as the latter is presented in the Socratic practice of dialegesthai. My dissertation examines this relation both within Plato's dialogues, especially in the Gorgias, Apology, Crito and Republic, and without, as I draw upon phenomenological and psychoanalytic theories of shame and anthropological studies of so-called "shame-cultures" to explicate the sense of shame animating Plato's texts. Central to my interpretation of Plato is the focus on dramatic features of the dialogues as decisive for their philosophical meaning. ;The results of this examination point to a number of important philosophical consequences that Socrates accomplishes dramatically through shame. First, he undermines the Gorgianic conception of rhetoric as a vehicle of political domination, and he exposes the orator's soul as that of a panderer, a servant of the audience. Second, the shame experienced by Gorgias and the other interlocutors comes to light as an attunement to social power-relations, and also as an attunement to one's own integrity, one's agreement with oneself as disclosed in logos. Third, the integrity targeted by shame is shown to be socially-constituted, so that one's susceptibility to feeling shame when subjected to elenchos is symptomatic of a specific community of pleasures and pains. Fourth, shame is revealed to operate as a skopos, a watchman carrying out a vigil over the souls of individuals in society, thereby precluding the possibility of the concealment fantasized as the ring of Gyges. In this way, shame does the work of preserving the social order of friendship and community, and because it does this work in dialegesthai, Socratic dialectic can lay claim to being politike techne. When we piece together these philosophical consequences of shame, it is clear not only that shame is philosophically significant, but also that the Socrates who uses shame within his elenctic art of dialegesthai is captivating and disturbing in a way to which most interpretations fail to do justice

The disorientation experienced by those new to philosophy attests to the fact that philosophy is, essentially, a self-transformative focal practice requiring long training and renewed commitment, and this has implications for how we think about the use of technology in teaching philosophy. By examing Plato's famous critique of writing in his Phaedrus, Statesman, and Seventh Letter, we find that his account of philosophy as an epitēdeuma, or "focal practice," demonstrates why teaching philosophy is not a matter of "content-delivery," but rather a process of reorienting the student toward the subject matter of philosophy. The implications of this for the debate over online instructional formats in higher education are then explored in some detail.

A careful reading of the Gorgias along with related dialogues, such as the Apology, the Theaetetus, and other texts, shows that agonism is indispensable to the critique of prevailing opinions, to the transformation of the interlocutor through shame-inducing elenchos, and to philosophy as an ongoing, lifelong ‘training’ (askêsis) of oneself in relation to others. In this way, following Plato’s texts in understanding philosophy as agôn involves rethinking philosophy as an engaged contestation of one’s peers and the received opinions that are part of our relatedness to one another, as well as rethinking agôn as involving not just verbal combativeness, but also—in line with its root-meaning—as a matter of being gathered together in community through discourse (logos).

While it may be controversial to categorize Plato’s Theatetetus as “epistemological,” given what is implied by this term, the dialogue does offer a discourse on knowledge, at least in the minimal sense of questioning knowledge. But more than that, the dialogue “situates” its questioning, and its critical examination of attempted definitions of knowledge, in two ways that are particularly illuminating: first, its dramatization of Socrates coming-to-know Theaetetus through philosophical dialogue; second, its taking for granted a whole array of epistemic practices and keeping them in view, peripherally, throughout the discussion. The most interesting example of the latter is found in the famous Digression of the Theaetetus, where the difference between philosophy and rhetoric is understood in terms of the knowledge/lack-of-knowledge belonging to each.

One will never be able to interrogate wonder philosophically except by way of a questioning that the operation of wonder will already have determined. It is a well-known teaching in the writings of both Plato and Aristotle that wonder (thauma) is the beginning of philosophy. But few philosophers have given wonder much thought—certainly, no philosopher that I am aware of has, like Professor Sallis, returned time and again to think through wonder. Sallis’s thinking through wonder is guided by his reading of ancient Greek philosophy, and furthermore, as I hope to show, it opens up a reengagement with Greek philosophers—in particular, with those early Greek thinkers who are known collectively as the ..

This paper addresses the philosophical problems posed by shame-consciousness, specifically with respect to the question as to whether the feelings of shame signify an apprehension of truth. After reviewing several methodological problems posed by shame-consciousness, the paper takes up the theoretical treatment of shame in Freud, Scheler, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, in order to show how shame illuminates the constitution of subjectivity by power relations in society. This psychoanalytic and phenomenological account of shame is shown to be confirmed by material drawn from cultural studies of shame, and by contemporary feminist critique

Abstract Although the concept of “groundedness/autochthony“ ( Bodenständigkeit ) in Heidegger's writings receives far less scholarly attention than, for example, that of “releasement“ ( Gelassenheit ), a careful examination of the famous “ Gelassenheit “ speech of 1955 demonstrates that, in fact, Bodenständigkeit is the core concept around which everything else turns. Moreover, in the “ Gelassenheit “ speech and the writings on Hebel that follow, Heidegger understands Bodenständigkeit to be, fundamentally, something made possible by language in its particularities of tradition and locale. Thus, there is an intriguing continuity of meaning between that concept and the concept as it was used phenomenologically in his writings from the summer 1924 course up to Sein und Zeit

While many scholarly interpretations of Plato’s Symposium express skepticism toward the content of Alcibiades’ speech, this essay argues Alcibiades’ portrait of Socrates is credible on the whole, is consistent with the portrayal of Socrates elsewhere, and is of great significance for our understanding of philosophical eros as exemplified in Socrates’ philosophical activity. Furthermore, by putting Socrates on trial for hybris, Alcibiades’ speech raises important philosophical questions as to whether the contempt with which he treated Alcibiades is not part and parcel of the wholesale contemning of human particularity implicit in Diotima’s teaching about eros.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Philosophical Rhetoric of Socrates’ MissionRobert Metcalf"We shall dismiss this business of Chaerephon, as it is nothing but a cheap and sophistical tale [sophistikon kai phortikon diegema]"—Colotes, according to Plutarch's Moralia 14, 1116f-1117a.Socrates' account of his "mission" on behalf of the god at Delphi is one of the most memorable parts of his most famous memorial in Plato's Apology. But it is also controversial as to what it means to Socrates and what it should mean to readers of Plato's text.1 First, there is the curious fact that the story occurs nowhere outside the competing versions of Socrates' defensespeech in Plato and Xenophon, and in the latter version the oracular report differs significantly in content and import: there the Pythia proclaims, not that no one is wiser than Socrates, but that no one is more generous or more just or more "soundminded" (sophron), and Xenophon's Socrates uses this as evidence that he "outshone the rest of mankind" and "deserves congratulations from gods and men alike" (Apology 14-18).2 Furthermore, the sequence of events that make up Socrates' "mission" is itself difficult to discern, from its apparent prompting by the oracular message to Chaerephon, to Socrates' initial effort to refute it, to his ultimate practice of elenchos in order that the oracle (or, at least, his interpretation of the oracle) might remain unrefuted.3 Not surprisingly, it was already a matter of controversy in the third century BC, as we read in the above quotation from Plutarch's Moralia. Whereas Arcesilaus interpreted the story of the Delphic oracle, and the account of elenctic practice occasioned by the oracle, as a model for his own skeptical orientation, Colotes, the Epicurean, charged that he had been duped by Socrates' sophistic oratory.4 To be sure, Colotes' charge of sophistry is meant to be abusive and has value for us only insofar as it counters a piously uncritical reading of Socrates' self-portrayal in Plato's Apology.5 In what follows I shall argue that an appreciation of the irony and mock-humility with which Socrates accounts for his "mission" to philosophize [End Page 143] affords us insight into the philosophical rhetoric that is essential to Socrates' practice of elenchos.But let us begin by examining those strange elements in Socrates' account that have made it "notorious" in the way suggested by the ancient debate.6 Socrates introduces the story of the oracle only after he dismisses, somewhat cursorily, the charges circulated by his "first accusers"—namely, that he investigates the things under the earth and heavenly things, and that he educates people for money (19b-20c). Insisting that he does not dishonor the knowledge involved in these activities (19c, 20b-c), Socrates nonetheless offers little defense apart from simply disowning such knowledge, presumably because these activities are not related to that "matter" (pragma) which has earned him his peculiar reputation (20c-d). It is here, in his explanation of this matter, that Socrates recounts the story of Chaerephon and the Pythia.7 As he begins the story he repeats his vow from the beginning of his defense to tell the jury only the truth (20d), assures them that he is not joking, and then is compelled to plead with them not to make any disturbances—"even," he says, "if I seem to you to be boasting [mega legein] somewhat" (20e). These successive declarations are all necessary, for the story has it that Socrates acquired his reputation through the human wisdom for which Socrates was singled out by the oracle at Delphi (20d-e).Socrates' puzzlement over the oracle and his effort to subject it to elenchos are offered as an explanation for the elenctic practice by which he comes, over time, to acquire his reputation.8 Although he does not say that his practice of elenchos begins with his investigation of the oracle's meaning, he does portray his subsequent practice of elenchos as being "in accordance with the god [kata ton theon]" (22a), an activity for which the god stands as a trustworthy witness (20e), and thus as a "matter of the god [to tou theou]" (21e). Ironically, the account Socrates...