What are the implications of taking seriously Chaïm Perelman's proposition that “definitions are rhetorical”? Efforts to find Real Definitions are dysfunctional to the extent they direct argumentation toward pseudo “is” claims and away from explicit “ought” claims about how words are to be used. Addressing definitional disputes explicitly as propositions ofought rather thanis could put on the agenda the pragmatic concerns of definitional choice that might otherwise remain tacit.

This paper investigates the origins of the Oral Theory as formulated by Milman Parry in Paris during the late 1920s by reexamining the scholarship on which it rests. Parry's Oral Theory compared the texts of oral performances in Yugoslavia with the Homeric texts in order to shed light on the presumed oral origins of the latter. His work integrated the work of the linguist and Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet, the linguist and scholar of oral poetics Matthias Murko, and the anthropologists Lucien (...) Lévy-Bruhl and Marcel Jousse. (shrink)

Socrates famously compares himself to a midwife in Plato'sTheaetetus. Much less well known is the developed metaphor of pregnancy at the centre of the initiation ritual that begins Brahmanical education. In this ritual, calledUpanayana, the teacher is presented as becoming pregnant with the student. TheArthavavedastates:The teacher leads the student towards himself, makes him an embryo within; he bears him in his belly three nights.

Suzanne de Castell; On Writing of Theory and Practice, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 23, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 39–49, https://doi.org/10.1111.

Autopoietic societies have produced three major images of civilization: the Greco-Roman, the Eurocentric Western, and the Settler Society type. The most important incarnation of the latter to date has been America. This article explores the deep-going differences between American and European ideas of civilization. It examines how the American kind of autopoietic civilization expresses itself in preternaturally distinctive conceptualizations of nature and freedom, life and death, order and chaos, city and ecumene. The article discusses the political and social implications of (...) this. (shrink)

No Íon, a autoridade e a sabedoria de poetas e rapsodos são confrontadas por meios indiretos. O caráter oblíquo dessa estratégia impede o acesso direto ao conteúdo do diálogo e provoca inúmeros equívocos de leitura. Um fato contextual estimula mais ainda leituras equivocadas. A poesia tratada no Íon difere muito da forma como nós, modernos, a entendemos. Na Antiguidade grega, de base aural, a poesia era o modo privilegiado de conservação da tradição herdada, e permaneceu exercendo essa função capital até (...) mesmo quando a escrita passou a desempenhar papel relevante na forma de composição e transmissão cultural. Neste contexto, o rapsodo representa uma autoridade que cobre praticamente todos os campos do saber. Autoridade enciclopédica, contra a qual Platão travou uma guerra não sem ambiguidades. O presente artigo busca revelar a motivação profunda que anima o Íon: a contraposição entre dois modos de comunicação, o da poesia e o da filosofia. Defende, ainda, que Platão, ao atacar a performance poética, busca, além de rejeitá-la, substituí-la pelo élenkhos socrático como modo de comunicação ideal para instrução e guia da vida humana. (shrink)

Thucydides uses the first extended episode in the History, the Corcyrean conflict , to present the world of political discourse, deliberation, and battle. This episode is programmatic for a number of reasons: it is the first episode with a pair of speeches; Thucydides ties this episode directly to the outbreak of the war; certain questions, such as morality's relevance to foreign policy, are introduced here for the first time; and, most importantly, it is here that Thucydides establishes what the reader's (...) role is to be throughout the work. This paper argues that, for all the significance of Thucydides' Archaeology and Statement of Method , the "participatory" dimension of the History begins with the Corcyrean conflict. It is only with the introduction of speeches that the reader must address the ways in which speech and narrative confirm and undermine each other, as the historian's voice now alternates and competes with that of his characters in speech. From an authorial perspective we find that various techniques Thucydides employs-multiple perspective, authorial reticence, and episodic presentation-are used to recreate the political arena of fifth-century Greece. The various facets of the reader's extensive labor may be clustered under the heading of extrapolation and conjecture , as the reader must endeavor to see events from the perspective of the participants, evaluate claims made in speeches, experience battle vicariously, and consider events-which are past from the reader's perspective-as future in terms of the subsequent narrative. Analogous to what Plato did for philosophy, Thucydides has produced an interactive, open-ended, and participatory type of literature by appealing to the reader's involvement and by bringing written literature as close as possible to the live, extemporaneous, face-to-face debate of oral Greek culture. (shrink)

Excavates the experiential structure of Habermas’s communicative action.

_Excavates the experiential structure of Habermas’s communicative action._.

This paper deals with a development of the ancient thought on mimesis in its modern reception as regards a certain idea of theatre. It defends the hypothesis that the figure of the character, as set up in Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien, has its source in a curious reversal of the Platonic mimesis. After presenting the main tenets of Plato’s reflection on mimesis and of Diderot’s theory on character, showing their convergences and contrasts, it is analyzed how such a conceptual (...) turnaround has historically taken place, by establishing a chain of reception from Plato to Diderot passing through Cicero and the Renaissance artists. (shrink)

_Discusses philosophers Mencius and Aristotle as socio-ecological thinkers._ Mencius (385–303/302 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) were contemporaries, but are often understood to represent opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. Mencius is associated with the ecological, emergent, flowing, and connected; Artistotle with the rational, static, abstract, and binary. Douglas Robinson argues that in their conceptions of rhetoric, at least, Mencius and Aristotle are much more similar than different: both are powerfully socio-ecological, espousing and exploring collectivist thinking about the circulation of energy (...) and social value through groups. The agent performing the actions of _pistis_, “persuading-and-being-persuaded,” in Aristotle and _zhi_, “governing-and-being-governed,” in Mencius is, Robinson demonstrates, not so much the rhetor as an individual as it is the whole group. Robinson tracks this collectivistic thinking through a series of comparative considerations using a theory that draws impetus from Arne Naess’s “ecosophical” deep ecology and from work on rhetoric powered by affective ecologies, but with details of the theory drawn equally from Mencius and Aristotle. (shrink)

Plato’s Phaedrus, perhaps his most enigmatic and structurally convoluted dialogue, could easily be said to inaugurate a pointed critique of mass media that persists to the present day. Indeed, in certain corners of media theory, the origin myth of writing furnished in the Phaedrus (in which the Egyptian god Theuth presents writing as a gift to King Thamus) has in turn come to serve as a kind of origin myth for media theory: a primaeval pharmacopoeia of media effects. And yet, (...) this is an origin myth that can only underwrite not only its own non-originarity and non-truth, insofar as its very status as a written text ensures that it will never meet the criteria that it itself establishes for a reasoned account of things (logos). It remains perpetually orphaned, unable to defend itself, irrevocably cut off from its ‘father’, the speaking subject, and thus from the vitality of living discourse. But this paradox, I argue, is not a failing of the dialogue, but is a device intended to encourage the reader’s active involvement in the text’s status as medium. The Phaedrus is not just diagnostic, but therapeutic. (shrink)

In book X, Plato's rejection of mimetic poetry can be read as a parallel to rejecting the conventions of the poetic style contemporary to his time. This rejection can, owing to the premises derived and the analyses made in this paper, further be read as to suggest that Plato presses for a reformation of the poetic vocabulary. That is, as to suggest that Plato proposes that the non-rational imagistic tradition, embodied in mimetic poetry, get replaced by a rational and noetic-aspiring (...) rhetoric that opts for knowledge and truth. (shrink)

From earliest times, Homer was regarded as an authority in education, and in shaping social and political life. For Homer in Iliad and Odyssey describes the dominant values, moral virtues of the Greek culture via its heroes. In fact, this narration has opened the way for him to be regarded as the first teacher of the Greeks. His most famous students are Achilles and Telemachus. He talks about Achilles’ education in Iliad, Telemachus’ in Odyssey through his teachers. But the education (...) of these two heroes is both similar and different in some ways. From the moment Achilles was born, he knows the values of the class he belongs to, who he is. On the contrary, Telemachus as a child without a father does not know who he is. Yet, their education which is centered around not only words but also deeds, makes these two heroes know what to say and what to do. In the end, they gain the honor of becoming a Homeric hero. So the aim of this paper is to elaborate both different and similar educations of these heroes. (shrink)

In Plato’s dialogues we often find Socrates talking at length about poetry. Sometimes he proposes censorship of certain works because what they say is false or harmful. Other times we find him interpreting the poets or rejecting potential interpretations of them. This raises the question of whether there is any consistent account to be given of Socrates’ practice as a literary critic. One might think that Plato himself in the Ion answers the question that I have raised. Rhapsody, at least (...) in the Ion , is portrayed as the activity of interpreting and evaluating the works of the poets. At first glance at least, Plato seems to conclude that this activity cannot meet the standards of a τέχνη. Rhapsodes are divine madmen. Thus, there cannot be a systematic Platonic account of literary criticism because this activity is inherently irrational and, subsequently, not something that one could engage in in a systematic way, guided by a theory of any sort. In the first part of the paper I argue that the Ion does not simply consign the Interpretation of poetry to the irrational and, as a result, does not pose an obstacle to the possibility of a Platonic literary criticism. In the second part of the paper I turn to the task of finding an account of the purpose of reading poetry and strategies for fulfilling this purpose that make systematic sense of Socrates’ multifarious remarks about poetry. (shrink)

This essay advances an interpretation of early Christian codex books, which goes beyond Catherine Pickstock’s critique of Jacques Derrida. Firstly, it summarizes Derrida’s deconstruction of Plato’s Phaedrus and introduces his understanding of writing as différance. Secondly, it outlines Pickstock’s After Writing in order to understand her emphasis upon the liturgical nature of platonic dialogue. It is here that an ambiguity emerges between writing and codex books in Pickstock’s account. In response, the insights of book historians such as Roger Chartier will (...) be brought to bear in order to understand the longer history of the codex, which sees the printing press as a continuation of the early transition from roll to codex in the second century of the Common Era. It has long been noted that Christians of this period were early and pervasive adopters of codex binding for their sacred literature. By summarizing the reasons why, it will be shown how the codex expressed early Christian religious concerns. (shrink)

En Después del fin del arte, Danto se refiere a la mímesis como un estilo artístico y como la respuesta filosófica a la pregunta acerca de qué es el arte. En el panorama del arte contemporáneo, la mímesis se habría agotado y no tendría ningún papel activo que cumplir. El objetivo de mi trabajo será mostrar cómo Danto construye un relato legitimador en torno a la mímesis que le permite justificar su tesis sobre el fin del arte. Luego, señalaré los (...) problemas que implica dicho relato, haciendo hincapié en la pluralidad de sentidos que entraña la noción de mímesis desde sus primeras formulaciones griegas. Finalmente, expondré algunas razones que permiten seguir sosteniendo la vigencia de la noción de mímesis en la discusión contemporánea, sin invalidar la crítica que subyace a la controvertida tesis de Danto sobre el fin del arte. (shrink)

The discovery of social phenomena by a discipline whose roots are abidingly psychological has been a singular development in American educational research. Formulations of situatedness are emblematic of this rethinking, and depending on our understanding of it, we have in situatedness the possibility of a distinctive set of analytic commitments. This paper discusses these possibilities and their development in the educational research literature, in the particulars of the Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) publication Situated Cognition. In the end, situatedness is (...) understood as a unifying formulation. And while it opens a huge domain of topics for inquiry, it also proves, as its inclusiveness, of no use whatsoever as a parsing device. Situated cognition, for example, could not be, nor has ever been, otherwise. (shrink)

Against any obscurantist stand, denying the interest of natural sciences for the comprehension of human meaning and language, but also against any reductionist hypothesis, frustrating the specificity of the semiotic point of view on nature, the paper argues that the deepest dynamic at the basis of meaning consists in its being a mechanism of ‘potentiality navigation’ within a universe generally characterized by motility. On the one hand, such a hypothesis widens the sphere of meaning to all beings somehow endowed with (...) the capacity of moving and/or perceiving movement. On the other hand, through a new evolutionist interpretation of the concept of generativity, such a hypothesis preserves the peculiarity of human meaning, meant as essentially founded on a certain intuition of infinity. Two corollaries stem from this hypothesis: first, religiosity can be considered as a matrix of grammars of infinity, aiming at regimenting its flight of potentialities. Second, non-genetic transmission of cultural information exerts determinant influence also at the level of that very deep mechanism of the human predicament that is the cognitive navigation of motor potentialities. A re-reading of the structuralist epistemology, scientific literature on the nervous cells of jellyfish, and some recent experiments on the mirror neurons of dancers, as well as certain intuitions of Teilhard de Chardin, are the main arguments of the paper. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the human, all too human vulnerability to mimesis (imitation) is a central and so far underdiagnosed element internal to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Supplementing medical accounts of viral contagion, the chapter develops a genealogy of the concept of mimesis – from antiquity to modernity to the present – that is attentive to both its pathological and therapeutic properties. If an awareness of the pathological side of mimetic contagion is constitutive of the origins of philosophy, in Plato’s (...) Republic, and crowd psychology called attention to the mirroring dynamic of affective contagion among crowds and publics in the modern period, the Covid-19 pandemic crisis highlights the pathological implications of hypermimetic conspiracies reloaded by new media, while also revealing the human ability to develop therapeutic patho-logies – that is, critical discourses (or logoi), on the contagious dynamic of mimetic pathos. Like a Janus-faced mirror, then, this genealogy of homo mimeticus calls attention to both the contemporary dangers of affective contagion and to the urgency of transformations or metamorphosis to counter future pandemic and environmental threats that loom large in the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Against Writing The Hole in the Argument Spotting the Defense of Philosophical Writing A Sociology of Symbols The Psychological Power of Symbols.

In Historied Thought, Constructed World, Joseph Margolis identifies the philosophical themes that will dominate philosophical discussions in the twenty-first century, given the recognition of the historicity of philosophical thought in the twentieth century. In what follows I examine these themes, especially cognitive intransparency, and the arguments presented in favor of them, noting the extent to which they rest on a view of language that takes a written text, and not speech, as the paradigm of language. I suggest if one takes (...) speech as a mutual embodied action in a shared space as a model for language, the theme of cognitive intransparency—and the problems it brings in its wake—does not loom so large for those of us working in the history of philosophy. I conclude by showing that if we adopt this suggestion in relation to early Greek philosophy, that is, the period in the history of historied thought in which philosophy itself emerges as a linguistic and intellectual activity, we can better understand how and why philosophy emerged as it did—in the form of dialogues by Plato. (shrink)

The author argues that Michael Polanyi’s philosophy of science can be understood as an (unconscious) attempt to recapture elements of experience largely forgotten or repressed in modernity. Specifically, the author argues that Polanyi’s epistemology appears to draw on elements of oral—aural experience that have been relatively ignored by the heavily visual sensory orientation typical of modern Western societies. The author does this by first deriving the primary features of the modern objectivist conception of knowledge from Polanyi’s critique of objectivism and (...) then using the anthropological literature on the differences between oral and literate cultures to demonstrate that these same aspects of the objectivist paradigm correspond closely to typical features of literate, visual consciousness while Polanyi’s alternative formulations correspond to a more oral—aural orientation. (shrink)

During the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic a variety of social activities migrated online, including religious ceremonies and rituals. One such instance is the case of Santo Daime, a Brazilian rainforest religion that utilizes the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca in its rituals. During the pandemic, multiple Santo Daime rituals involving the consumption of ayahuasca took place online, mediated through Zoom and other online platforms. The phenomenon is notable since the effects of hallucinogens are defined by context and Santo Daime rituals are habitually governed (...) by punctilious regulations aimed at directing the experience of participants. The abrupt move to online space thus augurs significant implications in the context of hallucinogenic rituals. This paper looks at this development and its repercussions for entheogenic rituals, as it asks how do psychedelic rituals change when they move online? Building on the author’s previous work on set and setting in the Santo Daime religion, the paper introduces accounts from 12 semi-structured interviews with daimistas participating in online daime rituals, approached through the prism of set and setting, and the study of online religiosity. The analysis points at several key dynamics emerging in the context of virtual rituals. The migration online allowed for the continuation of Santo Daime entheogenic rituals at a time of social distancing, fostered a sense of global brotherhood and opened new possibility for religious participation and learning. Concurrently, online ritual produced an impoverished ritual experience and novel types of challenges including a higher potential for distractions, technical difficulties, and low sensory fidelity. Other novel challenges included social anxiety and an in-built tension between the social and spiritual dimensions of ritual. Finally, some participants were concerned by the cultural context of online rituals: technological mediation, consumerism, commodification, and digital divide. The limitations of digital technology appear amplified by the highly immersive, body oriented, experientially intensified context of the psychedelic experience. This paper contributes to the literature on the extra-pharmacological factors shaping experiences with psychedelics, as well as to the literature on the consequences of the adoption of digital media technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)