Upcoming Plans

It has obviously been a while since I have posted. Travel and preparing for an upcoming conference in Germany haven’t given me much time to devote to my Plato blog.

I will be presenting a paper at the Colloquium on Violence and Religion in Freising, Germany next Tuesday. Here is a link to the conference schedule. My paper is to be entitled “Homonoia, Positive Mimesis and the Sharability of Desire” and it is undergoing a total redraft as we speak. Much of my preparation was in studying various classical authors (particularly Plato and Aristotle) on the theme of homonoia, which translates roughly as “likemindedness” or “unanimity.”  However, due to time constraints and the anticipated audience, I had to leave much of that discussion out. The paper will be more straightforwardly Girardian. I will post the paper eventually when I get it in a presentable state.

After the conference, my plan is begin reading through the entire Platonic corpus with a couple of friends, using William Altman’s reconstructed “Reading Order” of the dialogues from his book Plato The Teacher. Following his plan, we will read Protagoras, Alcibiades Major and Minor, Erastai (Lovers) and Hippias Major and Minor, then see how it goes from there.

I am also have a nice time some favorite reading short stories with my reading group. The group of about twenty gathers in my living room every 2 or 3 weeks. This summer we have already discussed “The Moons of Jupiter” by Alice Munro and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor. On July 28th, we will discuss Anton Chekhov’s “The Black Monk”. Then we will read “Bluebeard’s Egg” by Margaret Atwood, “The Judgment” by Franz Kafka and “Signs and Symbols” by Vladimir Nabokov. In the fall our plan is to begin discussing Thomas Mann’s mammoth Joseph and His Brothers — that one could take a while…

So I should be back posting again in a few weeks. Until then, auf wiedersehen!