Sep 29, 2014

Musings About Platonic Virtues and Forms

Last week, I traveled down to Felician College in northern New Jersey to give a talk, or more specifically, a current research workshop session, hosted by the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs -- "Just What is A Platonic Virtue?" (video of the talk and discussion is available here)

This is a topic about which I've been thinking for quite some time, and intending eventually to write an article, so given an opportunity to present my current reflections on the topic to an audience of interested philosophy majors and professional colleagues -- the latter of whom I could count on to know Plato's texts and key ideas well -- I was very happy to come down, lay out the problematic as I had come to envision it, and get some useful feedback from my peers.

Sep 3, 2014

The Iron Law of Ochlocracy (part 2)

A bit tongue-in-cheekily, about a week and a half ago, I coined a neologism - the Iron Law of Ocholcracy - to describe a dynamic which contemporary Marxist theorist, Michael Hardt, outlined in his recent talk at European Graduate School.  Hardt was speculating about two main topics, both having to do with a perceived dearth of emergent and identifiable leadership among recent leftist "leaderless movements."

One of these is the question why leaders aren't emerging -- a question that he noted could be answered partly by the abilities of external forces to eliminate or co-opt apparent "leaders", but whose deeper answer he sought in the very workings, ideals, and ideologies of the groups and movements.  Another is whether this constitutes a real problem or not -- is it a bad thing or a good thing, all told, even when taking into account concerns of effectiveness and continuity, to seemingly dispense with leadership and all that it entails?