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News & Events
Fall 2007 Seminars
Stephen White
Professor and Department Chair
Department of Classics
University of Texas, Austin
Friday, November 30, 2007
4:00pm-6:00pm
Humanities Building 119
Aristotle's Pleasures
We all know plenty about pleasure. But it is very hard to say what pleasure is. Is it, for example, a) an object of experience - something that we perceive or feel or think, like colors or warmth or gratitude - or rather b) a kind of experience - a distinctive kind of sensation, feeling, or thought? Aristotle's answer, I argue, is that pleasure in and of itself is neither (a) nor (b); rather, it is essentially connected to some experiences or mental events (as in b) in such a way that it is always available as a possible object of awareness (as in a). More precisely, pleasure is a distinctive feature or property of some sensory or mental activities, namely, the goodness of any good sensory or mental functioning. As a result, we often have or undergo ("experience") pleasures without noticing either that we have them or what exactly they are. The paper focuses on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics 10.4 and On the Soul 3.2.
Spring 2007 Seminars
Marie-Pierre Noël
Professor of Greek
University of Montpellier
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
4:00pm-5:00pm
Humanities Building 119
Painting or Writing Speeches ? Alcidamas, Plato and Isocrates on Logography
The talk will consider the term 'logography' in Alcidamas, Plato, and Isocrates. Comparing written speeches and figurative arts, this talk will consider whether Plato really does condemn written texts in the Phaedrus ?
Edward Watts
Assistant Professor
Indiana University Bloomington
Friday, December 8, 2006
4:00pm-5:00pm
Humanities Building 119
Conversations in the Portico: The Intellectual Environment of the Late Antique Alexandrian Student
The past few years has seen increasing attention being paid to the ideas presented in late Roman schools. This talk shifts our attention from the curriculum and formal lectures of professors to the way that individuals responded when new ideas (from teachers or other sources) challenged some of their core beliefs. It looks specifically at the religious and student experiences of a group of fifth century Alexandrian students and shows howpersonal relationships helped to determine the ways that students responded to the ideas presented by their teachers.
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