located bodies – two the discoursing body socrates’s words – what are they doing? – socrates...
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the city new spaces for meeting and talking for presenting oneself and one’s arguments for listening and countering... and for eavesdroppingTRANSCRIPT
located bodies – two
the discoursing body
Socrates’s words – what are they doing?
– Socrates and dialectic
the city
new spaces for meeting and talking
for presenting oneself and one’s arguments
for listening and countering
... and for eavesdropping
the law courts
forensic argument
the political assembly
representing interests
the theater
the dialogue
Socrates and dialectic
Socrates’ method
leading questions (49b)
pursuing ethical inquiry
working upon and eliminating contradiction
arguing from particular cases, but apparently detached
the effect of Socrates’ words
rationality at any cost
removing history
words as transparent as possible - uncontaminated by life
making the opponent acquiescefollow your line of reasoning in denying their own
an agonistic ethos
the good life?
reason = virtue = happiness
in a denial of life as sickness
his last words – “Crito - I owe a cock to Asclepius - please remember to pay the debt” – you made a sacrifice to Asclepius upon recovering from a disease
is life so worthless?
Nietzsche on Socrates ...
whence this equation – reason = virtue = happiness?
why the absurdly fanatical rationalism? – even unto death?
>> Twilight of the Idols
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... Socrates was ugly!
Nietzsche sees in Socrates’ physiognomy an indication of pathology
he was an ugly nerd, but found a way of exacting revenge and asserting his will
his rationality was a last ditch expedient – a strategy
dialectics as profoundly bad manners – “what has first to have itself proved is of little value”
in an aristocratic system one commands and gives reasons only afterwards– so Socrates was “rabble”, a clown and buffoon
irritating, inspiring mistrust
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Nietzsche on the pathology of reason
Twilight of the Idols –
“You ask me about the idiosyncrasies of philosophers? ... There is their lack of historical sense, their hatred of even the idea of becoming, their Egyptianism. They think they are doing a thing honor when they remove it from history, sub specie aeterni – when they make a mummy of it. All that philosophers have handled for millennia are these conceptual mummies: nothing actual has escaped from their hands alive. ...”
>> Twilight of the Idols
seriously though ... !
Socrates and Plato are discoursing in the city of Athens
discourse
the term is used here to mean located speech
vital speech - located in community, history, life, the senses
... one of the implications of the dialogue format
located bodies – two
the discoursing body
its words are not transparent, merely communicating
but are dispersed
in encounter and dialogue with others
in specific historical, social, physical locations
riddled with issues of asserting one over another
tactically located – interested