Saturday, September 19, 2009

More

I could return to questions that first started interesting me in graduate school: why does the chorus decide to stay with Promoetheus and share his fate in Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound? Why does Lady Macbeth decide not to murder Duncan herself, without her husband's help, in Macbeth? What is the Thucydides' understanding of chance, and the understanding of Plutarch in the lives of Timoleon and AP. (These were all my most successful papers in graduate school.)

In my experience, one small observation can take you far. My observation that Young Socrates responds in a most manly way in the first section of the statesman became a dissertation.

And my dissertation ends with a question: if Young Socrates is an example of courage detached from temperance, then perhaps Theatesus is an example of temperance detached from courage. That is a question that I am eager to pursue. The demands of my teaching have not permitted it, and I need the leisure to do it. I need the leisure and opportunity that St. John's affords to pursue questions that are veyr important to me.

Also Livy.

Translated: part of Klein's math book from German for my modern language requirement. French, etc.

What is the account of origins in the Timaeus, the Physics (?), and the nature of things?

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