Rachel Barney

Platonism, Moral Nostalgia, and the “City of Pigs”

What makes ancient Greece important for us is that it was faced by essentially the same political, philosophic, and religious problems as ourselves..... our age, like theirs, is one in which all the foundations are breaking down .... I speak here not only, or chiefly, of political shocks, but of what underlies them, the overturn of ideas. Everything is now being questioned, right and wrong, religion, philosophy, marriage, property, government. So was it also in the Greece of Plato; and that is how and why he came to write as he did..... He was trying at once to uproot and to rese~le. So that he is in some respects the greatest of revolutionaries, in others the greatest of reactionaries. (Dickinson 1947, viii-x)

Speaking with the same voice as reason

 readers of Greek ethics tend to favour those accounts of the virtuous ideal according to which virtue involves the development of our non-rational—appetitive and emotional— motivations aswell as of our rationalmotivations. So our contemporaries find much of interest and sympathy in Aristotle’s conception of virtue as a condition inwhich reasondoes not simply override our appetites and emotions, but these non-rational motivations themselves ‘speak with the same voice as reason’.2 By contrast, the Stoic readers of Greek ethics tend to favour those accounts of the virtuous ideal according to which virtue involves the development of our non-rational—appetitive and emotional— motivations aswell as of our rationalmotivations. So our contemporaries find much of interest and sympathy in Aristotle’s conception of virtue as a condition inwhich reasondoes not simply override our appetites and emotions, but these non-rational motivations themselves ‘speak with the same voice as reason’.2 By contrast, the Stoic

Colloquium 2 What Kind of Theory is the Theory of the Tripartite Soul

This paper discusses two related questions about Plato’s account of the tripartite soul in the Republic and Phaedrus. One is whether we should accept the recently prominent ‘analytical’ reading of the theory, according to which the three parts of the soul are animal-like sub-agents, each with its own distinctive and autonomous package of cognitive and desiderative capacities. The other question is how far Plato’s account so interpreted resembles the findings of contemporary neuroscience, given that this also depicts the mind as complex, partitioned, subject to conflict, and only very incompletely rational. The paper sketches the analytical reading, outlines the similarities and disanologies of the theory so understood to contemporary neuropsychology, and then steps back to consider three problems with such an interpretation. None is decisive; but they raise doubts as to whether the question of the title can really be answered in the way both the analytical reading and the modern parallel presume.

Intrinsically Scarce Goods

We are concerned with a class of goods that are both scarce and valued for experiences that depend on their authenticity and unmediated access to them. Such goods include prehistoric cave paintings, spectacular natural sites, and several of the arts. Because these goods are scarce, access to them must be restricted if they are to survive. After characterizing the goods we have in mind, we will propose a scheme for distributing access to them. Finally, we will suggest that the lessons learned from considering these goods and their distribution can be applied to other kinds of goods. The Paleolithic paintings and drawings found on cave walls at sites in France and Spain, such as Lascaux, Altamira and Vallon-Pont-D’Arc, have profound effects they have on those who see them. In addition to their historical interest, they are prized for their aesthetic and spiritual qualities, which have had an important influence on modern art. But the caves are small and the paintings are fragile. Access to them has been sharply limited: some caves have been closed to protect the paintings from the damage caused by human respiration; access to others is limited to those who negotiate a daunting reservation scheme. Despite being the heritage of humanity as a whole, the cave paintings are, and must be, restricted to a very few. Not everyone who wants to see the paintings can do so if they are to survive. How many other goods are like this? There are many unique sites around the world that, while perhaps not quite so fragile, seem to be scarce in a similar way: unfettered access to them would destroy their value. Some are natural: the Grand Canyon, for instance. Others are artificial: historically significant buildings, such as Notre Dame, cities, such as Florence, or art objects, such as 1 Philosophy, University of Chicago/Philosophy and Classics, University of Toronto and Philosophy, University of Chicago.