Bodily and Intellectual Pains and Pleasures

I gave a paper at McMaster last week. It was (large) part of the Phaedo paper on the philosophers' pleasures of learning, as it has become in the meantime, thanks to wise critical comments and even wiser, amazingly wiser, constructive proposals. It was the best Q&A I ever had. There were many relevant questions on the Platonic pleasure project, made not only by faculty members but also by very promising graduate students: having made heavy use of the Philebus, it had to be examined to what extent I tread carefully as I should, and also, to what extent my analysis of the relation between pleasure and pain in the case of bodily and intellectual pleasures (the ones related to learning, like examining or teaching) is sound. 

But I was also pushed beyond the boundaries of the paper, and in very interesting ways, though it does not always happen to get this particular combination: One question, asked by Mark Johnstone, concerned Socrates' cheerfulness. Having focused on the Socrates of the Philebus and the Phaedo, my Socrateses were to say the least quite knowledgeable. But what about the other versions? How were they motivated if not by the uplifting possibility of attaining knowledge (Apology's oracle and the Socratic interpretation; as of late line represented by Rusty Jones' Socrates Felix?)? That mystery the paper does not solve (if the right way to deal with mysteries is by solving them), definitely not. I do not turn to claims on happiness from claims about pleasure, given that I think that Plato is not an hedonist and even less a utilitarian. But could we say and think as possible that those less "cheerful" portrays of Socrates were motivated by the possibilities of being refuted, and this small bit of progress made in those cases?

There was another marvellous question, I think by far the best I have gotten so far when giving papers on Plato and other chaps: Let us imagine that Oedipus (the one after all "self-knowledge" has happened and the deeds that followed it) and Socrates are in the same room. What kind of therapy would Socrates offer him? Well, for sure I would not like to be present in that room! I doubt that Socrates and his excellent cognitive therapy of intellectual depression can help there. Are we going to deliver him to psychoanalysis? Before deciding, we need to think harder.

Did you know that Hans-Georg Gadamer taught for three consecutive years as visiting professor at McMaster? How small the world has always been, and open to dialogue!

Fruits of Patience

While the fall term was establishing itself in its frantic rhythms, and I was feeling more of a machine than a ghost, Stratford Ontario offered me the marvellous opportunity to experience two Shakespeare Classics again, and taste life's topsy-turviness from the comic and the tragic perspective: Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. With all due respect to living the present moment and taking a delight in doing so, the acting was mostly disappointing, but I was motivated to watch some good, older performances with actors and actresses who were acting well instead of shouting lots. So all's well that ends well: Stratford was a (good) means to further good ends. Admittedly it is extremely daring and challenging to stage such classics. But why such a haste to stage Shakespeare? Why, for instance, turn a forty-year old actor into a Lear some years ago? Why such a rush, I am wondering.

And then European beauty entered (or in this case rather flooded) the scene in deed as beauty often does, seemingly suddenly, with a  film masterpiece and love letter to Van Gogh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8xcLdOjX6w

As for now, I am pleasantly anticipating some mesmerizing acting (one does not need more than two minutes to say that), King Lear, by Royal Shakespeare Company with Antony Sher in NYC next year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW4bEi1_RdQ

While the term is coming to its end, I am working on Aristotle on Plato on pleasure (or how one becomes his own man by listening to another man), and, what a delight, on French, among other, much more important wonders. A couple of students amazed me. I am meeting and working with them so that the next steps are taken. I screened Malick's The Knight of Cups; perhaps Kurosawa's Idiot will follow.

PS: Three Women at the Spring, Picasso, and "a line going for a walk" (Klee's definition of drawing), or else, Portrait of an Equilibrist, Klee, MoMA NYC)

PPS: Avant-garde is alive, and not only to be found in museums. See, for instance, how a young Greek artist, Fikos, marries byzantine art and ancient Greek motives with street art, which he calls "contemporary byzantine art":

His Earth and Sky

(for more consider: http://fikos.gr/portfolio/?lang=en)