Peter Ahrensdorf on Plato's Republic
Tue, March 22, 2022 4:00 PM at Lemon Tree Room, The Graduate Hotel
It was through his poetry that Plato founded a philosophic tradition that has lasted down to our own day. Through his poetic portrayal of Socrates, Plato presented to the world for the first time an image of the philosopher as a heroic human being, who faces death fearlessly and propounds such edifying doctrines as the Forms and the Immortality of the Soul. According to Plato himself, however, there was an earlier philosophic tradition, one founded by the poet Plato calls “the educator of the Greeks”––Homer. But if Plato and Homer are both philosophic poets, why does Plato criticize Homer so harshly? And why did Plato found a new philosophic tradition? My lecture explores 3 questions: 1) In what sense does Homer’s presentation of his tragic warrior heroes constitute a poetic introduction to philosophy? 2) What is Plato’s critique of the Homeric education and how does Plato’s new philosophic education reflect that critique? 3) How might a defender of Homer respond to Plato’s critique?
Peter J. Ahrensdorf is James B. Duke Professor of Political Science and Affiliated Professor of Classics at Davidson College; author of five books, including ones on Homer (Cambridge, 2014), Sophocles (Cambridge, 2009); and Plato (SUNY, 1995); and recipient of a Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation fellowship, a Fulbright scholarship, and 3 NEH fellowships. His latest book––Homer and the Tradition of Political Philosophy: Encounters with Plato, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche––will be published by Cambridge University Press in September, 2022.