The Cogs of the Ideal City
A New Reading of Civic Ethics in the Platonic Corpus
This is a series of four workshops on civic ethics in Plato. Beyond a description of legal status, Plato appreciates citizenship as a manifestation of human consciousness. Thus, across his dialogues, but mainly in the Republic and the Laws, he employs civic ethics to articulate our position in the cosmos, here and there, now and then, and to negotiate our telos in both historical and metaphysical terms. Civic virtue is second only to philosophical insight, the privilege of which belongs to inspired leaders. In this context, we will study two famous Platonic metaphors about cultivating the civic mindset: shared music and drink aesthetics (Workshops 1 and 2) are paramount in the ideal city because they enable citizens to develop self-awareness through culturally specific ways. To foster social cohesion, Plato also rehabilitates traditional literary and rhetorical tropes in his dialogues; the myth of the Golden Age which appears in the Republic but also the Laws and famously the Statesman (Workshops 3 and 4) enables communities to envision their role in history under the type of leadership that will align them with the divine law, away from history’s transient nature. Thus, Plato’s totalitarianism can be understood (though not excused) as an attempt to escape historical failure by prescribing a collective different state of consciousness. The accommodation of these ideas in early Christianity will also be discussed at the conclusion of each workshop.
Coordinator: Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides (eva.anagnostou-laoutides@mq.edu.au)
Seminar sessions
Workshop 1: Plato on Social Harmony and Musical Education
Workshop 2: Plato on Drinking and Civic Consciousness
Workshop 3: Plato on History and the Golden Age
Workshop 4: Leadership, Rhetoric, and Platonic Notions of the Social Contract
Duration: 4 weeks (6 hours)
Meetings: Saturdays, 11.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. (Greece time) (4 sessions: 25/2, 4/3, 11/3, 18/3)
Place: Online (MS Teams)
Deadline for Applications: 20 February 2023
A certificate of attendance will be provided upon request to all registered participants
Video recording will be available to registered participants
For questions, contact: info@ipt.gr
