Elysian Fields: Initiation to the Mysteries

I'm Adriel M. Trott, an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. I work on ancient Greek and contemporary continental philosophy inflected by social and political concerns. I am especially interested in the uses and abuses of the concept of nature in the history of philosophy and the social and political implications of these uses. I am currently working on a book project on the way that Aristotle thinks of the material working of form in the process of natural generation. I argue that form is dependent on material in natural becoming in a way that has consequences for how we think of the association of male animals with form and female animals with material.
I like to run. I'm into hot yoga. I care about justice, feminism, opposing racism and resisting neoliberalism. I think Socrates was on to something when he suggested thinking was a practice of living. I teach students to think. I delight in the pleasures of doing the difficult thing. I'm glad to be.
That’s an interesting insight about Socrates’ impiety….. Makes me think more about that line in the Symposium where Diotima tells him, ‘Even you, Socrates, could be initiated into these higher mysteries.” Tons of trial imagery there as well and, of course, Alcibiades….