Jun 7
Legend has it that Martin Heidegger was walking in the Black Forest with friends when he came across a country shrine and crossed himself. Knowing that Heidegger had given up his Catholicism, the friend asked what he was doing. Heidegger responded something like, “Many have prayed here, the gods must be near.”*
We arrived in Delphi and looked over the valley that cuts through the mountains up to the water and thought, the gods must be near. Read more
Thinkers from Plato to Marx remark on the need for leisure–for leisure time won by having one’s expenses covered and necessities provided–to engage in the life of the mind. After the busy work of investigating Athens, we have now settled into the leisurely place of Nafplion where we have plenty of time to think. I’ve set two thinking projects for myself: one is a paper on Arendt and Aristotle that I’m giving at the American Political Science Association (APSA) at the end of the summer and the other is a piece on Aristotle’s conception of government, politeuma, which I have presented a number of times and am now ready to send it out for publication. Read more
Yesterday we took the bus down to Nafplion on the peninsula that juts out from the northeast coast of the Peloponnese. It’s a gorgeous town that still retains its 19th century Italianate charm, as our host in absentia, told us. The place is rustic and again, to quote, “close to nature.” But I spend a lot of time thinking about nature so I’m pleased to be close to it.
I’ve been writing some fairly heady posts, so I’m taking this break to share some pictures of graffiti that I took in Athens and a couple here in Nafplio. What? No, long diatribe about how all writing is illicit and therefore of the structure of graffiti? That was just a teaser. You’ll have to fill out that argument on your own. Read more
Yesterday I went to the Piraeus with my husband. He’s the best. I’d recount our entire conversation to you, but it would take all night. At first, I didn’t want to stay to eat down there because I wasn’t entirely impressed by the restaurants which range from KFC to frozen seafood places. But I let myself be persuaded.
Earlier in the day, we went to the Benake Museum, which is in an old mansion near the Parliament building. It houses archaeological finds dating back to the Neolithic Era around 7000 BCE and art through the 19th and 20th centuries. I’ve been thinking since I arrived in Greece about how the Greeks occupy an ambiguous racial position (stay with me here, I promise this will bring me back to the Benake) Read more
The title of this post comes from Pericles’ Funeral Oration as recounted by Thucydides in History of the Peloponnesian War. My very patient traveling companion read it aloud to me today in the Kerameikos District, the Classical-era cemetery where Pericles gave that oration after the first dead had been returned to Athens at the start of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides remembers Pericles speaking thus: They [the dead] gave their lives to her [Athens] and to all of us, and for their own selves they won praises that never grow old, the most splendid of sepulchres–not the sepulchre in which their bodies are laid, but where their glory remains eternal in men’s minds, always there on the right occasion to stir others to speech or action. Read more
Yesterday, we went up to the Acropolis. Most people know that the Parthenon is on the Acropolis. The Temple of Athena Nike, the Propylaia, and the Erechtheion, which stands on the site of the Old Temple of Athena and is a shrine to Athena and Erechtheus, are there too. Alongside a number of support buildings like the Pinakotheke, the Acropolis in the time these buildings were built mostly in the sixth and fifth centuries was a thriving place of ritual sacrifice and worship of the gods.
Today when you walk around the Acropolis, it’s well-nigh impossible to have any sense of the space as a sacred site. Throngs of people taking selfies of themselves with the ruins, or finding some fellow traveller to be a photographer for a moment. Some people are even taking video of the buildings. I found this appalling not only because the sign at the entrance strictly forbids videoing the site, but also because it seems preposterous. Are you videoing because you expect the building to get up and move? Who will you actually subject to this footage? Are you really so afraid of having an unmediated experience of something that you must position a camera between yourself and the world? These are my thoughts. But to be fair, it’s only May, so the crowds aren’t even that overwhelming. Read more
Aristotle begins his Metaphysics noting that human beings are marked by their desire to know, a desire that is prompted by wonder, wonder that has before and continues to lead human beings to philosophize. So it seems fitting that our first day in Athens has brought wonder, both big and small. Read more
The Greek word ἱστορία (of course I’m going to tell you about the Greek word) means inquiry or investigation or the learning that happens through inquiry. There’s a trend in higher ed about how to get students to learn by doing and the inquiry that occurs in the engagement beyond the classroom, and I’ve been struck myself by how I, someone who has dedicated her life to thinking about things Greek, still needed the motivation of a trip to Greece to read and reread Ancient Greek history, mythology and architecture. I’m trying to be a good student, preparing myself by learning and refreshing my learning in advance so that I can achieve better insight and understanding when I’m there. I hate the oh-I-should-know-that-feeling and the if-I-knew-more-about-this-I’d-probably-appreciate-it feeling that comes from not having done the research, so this time, I’m hoping that doing my homework lets me have those brilliant serendipitous moments of recognition, connection and clarity. So you could say I’ve been engaged in a historia of the history of Greece, but especially of Athens. Read more
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. Melville, Moby Dick
On Monday, I get to sea. I am traveling to Greece for five weeks. First, a week in Athens and then south to Nafplio where most of June will be spent. Brief forays to Delphi, Corinth, Mycenae and Sparta will interrupt writing work all thanks to funds from the Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professorship that I hold at Wabash College. Read more
I'm Chair and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. I work on ancient Greek--mainly Plato and Aristotle--and contemporary European philosophy inflected by social and political concerns. I'm particularly interested in the concept of nature and how historically nature, understood in relation to its apparent opposite of reason, nature, and artifice, has led to conceptions of community that require a founding exclusion. My first book argues that Aristotle's Politicsdraws on a conception of nature that is not opposed to these things and thus not exclusive. My second book considers Aristotle's conception of nature in his account of generation to show the ways that form and matter seem interdependent in the model of a Möbius strip.
I am serious about running. 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--and to live. I delight in the pleasures of doing the difficult thing.
The Trott Line 