Monday, January 27, 2014
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Bobcats
Say what you will about the Bobcats and their organization, but if the season ended today, Charlotte would be in the playoffs! [the bar is pretty low in the Eastern Conference.]
Monday, January 20, 2014
The Brilliance of Plato
Plato always manages to surprise me. Today I was preparing for class tomorrow, where we'll be discussing Plato's Crito. In this dialogue, Crito tries to convince Socrates to break out of jail and run off to Thessaly. Socrates refuses based on his duties to Athens.
What I hadn't noticed until today: at the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates talks about a dream in which the goddess tells him: "The third day hence, to Phthia shalt thou go." (trans. by Jowett) Both Socrates and Crito take this to mean that Socrates won't die until the next day (the third day from the dream). I had never looked up "Phthia," assuming it's a mythical place where the dead go. According to Wikipedia, Phthia is a town in Thessaly! Hence, Socrates has already committed to going to Thessaly. The quote above is from the Iliad, where Achilles speaks the line; translated, Achilles says "I'm going home." And as Plato indicates, so is Socrates, just in a different way than Crito imagines.
What I hadn't noticed until today: at the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates talks about a dream in which the goddess tells him: "The third day hence, to Phthia shalt thou go." (trans. by Jowett) Both Socrates and Crito take this to mean that Socrates won't die until the next day (the third day from the dream). I had never looked up "Phthia," assuming it's a mythical place where the dead go. According to Wikipedia, Phthia is a town in Thessaly! Hence, Socrates has already committed to going to Thessaly. The quote above is from the Iliad, where Achilles speaks the line; translated, Achilles says "I'm going home." And as Plato indicates, so is Socrates, just in a different way than Crito imagines.
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