Plato worried that Greek tragedy causes us to act irrationally.
We had our major awards ceremony this past Saturday. As is tradition, we began with a poem by Lucille Clifton that she allowed us to adapt slightly for the occasion.Our president then gave one of his patented speeches, this one centered on Plato’s Meno. It was exactly what I wanted our students to hear: a full-blown defense of the liberal arts.
Last Thursday we had our memorial service for my friend Alan Paskow, the philosophy colleague whom I have written about several times. In my own remarks I invoked Plato’s Crito. I said that, for the three-plus years that Alan lived with the diagnosis of a terminal illness, he was like Socrates after having drunk the hemlock He knew that he was dying but he used his illness as an opportunity to explore with others what it meant. Like Socrates, he was a teacher to the end.
The Republic, The Art of War, The Social Contract, The Prince, and the Tao Te Ching gave me a way of understanding the broader implications of the business choices I was making. They helped me look beyond the immediate challenges to find a greater purpose. My individual efforts seemed part of a legacy of thinkers and doers who had come before.
Also posted in Tao Te Ching | Tagged Art of War, Business, Darien Bates, Education, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Liberal Arts, Machiavelli, Plato, Prince, Republic, Social Contract, Sun Tzu, Tao Te Ching |
Like much of America, I am still in a state of shock over Saturday’s shooting of a Congresswoman, a judge, and 16 others. Like many I wonder if this was an example of a disturbed mind encountering the inflamed political rhetoric that has come to characterize American political discourse. (Add Arizona’s permissive gun laws into [...]
Also posted in Aesop, Barrie (J. M.), Baum (L. Frank), Bradbury (Ray), Bukowski (Charles), Carroll (Lewis), Hemingway (Ernest), Hesse (Hermann), Hitler (Adolph), Homer, Huxley (Aldous), Juster (Norton(, Kesey (Ken), Lee (Harper), Marx (Karl), Orwell (George), Rand (Ayn) | Tagged Adolph Hitler, Aesop, Aldous Huxley, Alice through the Look Glass, Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Arizona killings, Ayn Rand, Brave New World, Charles Bukowski, Communist Manifesto, Ernest Hemingway, Fables, Fahrenheit 451, Gulliver's Travels, Harper Lee, Hermann Hesse, Homer, James Barrie, Jared Lee Loughner, Jonathan Swift, Karl Marx, Ken Kesey, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Mein Kampf, Meno, nimal Farm, Norton Juster Phentom Tollbooth, Odyssey, Old Man and the Sea, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Peter Pan, Plot, Pulp, Ray Bradbury, Reading George Orwell, Republic, Siddhartha, To Kill a Mockingbird, violence, We the Living, Wizard of Oz |
