Philosophy Seminar Series: Anne Mamary

Friday, April 14, 2023 1:30 PM to 2:45 PM EDT
Online Location, Zoom

Speaker: Prof. Anne Mamary (Monmouth College) 
 
Title: ‘Don’t Be a Drag, Just Be a Queen’
 
Abstract:  “In the Republic, Plato’s Socrates proposes that justice is the harmony of epithumia (appetitiveness), thymos (spiritedness), and andreiea (courage/manliness), held together by an erotically wise sophrosune (moderation, temperance)—whether in an individual or society. When Socrates goes “down . . . to the Peiraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston,” for the festival of the newly introduced Thracian goddess, Bendis, he makes the strange familiar when he praises the Thracian contingent and Athenian citizens alike (327a). Waylaid on his return to Athens, Socrates makes the familiar strange, using conventional names for the virtues, yet recomposing and reweaving their meaning. Plato suggests Socrates’ interlocutors must shift their view of justice through an examination of what it means to be affluent men. Socrates reminds them there is a female drama played out in three waves which threaten to wash the men ashore. He urges them to examine “the beach rubble” (Sappho) that Socrates makes of their conventional masculine and class assumptions in a journey that resonates with Odysseus’ fraught voyage home. Instead of returning to Ithaka and Penelope, Plato’s men might sail home to Athens and Socrates, who has been waiting for them and exhorting them all along.”
 

Though Seminar Series talks are oriented to faculty and grad students, this is a space where all who are interested in the topic are welcome and encouraged to attend. Any questions about the event should be directed to the colloquium committee organizer Dan Nicholson (dnicho@gmu.edu).