Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Reading Presocratics

I'm starting to prep in earnest for my undergraduate course this summer at Berkeley on ancient rhetoric. I usually teach rhetoric since the Thirty Year's War so I'm doing a lot of brushing up. I teach Aristotle and Plato all the time, but I'm digging back into fragments from Enheduanna, Sappho, Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Isocrates, Demosthenes, getting ready next week to pore over the second sophistic, Cicero, Horace, Quintillian, Libanius. Some of this stuff I haven't looked at for a quarter of a century! I'm not going to lie to you, it's a pure joy. Believe when I tell you that the predictable antics of Movement Republicans and Robot Cultists aren't exactly a comparable draw, so blogging may be a bit low for the moment. Teaching three courses and prepping for the three I'm crashing into this summer the moment I hand in grades for Spring is keeping me busy! More to come as the killer clowns and robo-priests manage to crack me up as they always do sooner rather than later...

2 comments:

jimf said...

> . . .the predictable antics of Movement Republicans and Robot Cultists. . .

Apropos of which -- New Gingrich's sci-fi connections:

http://thelifeofmanquamanonearth.blogspot.com/2012/02/another-article-about-newt-gingrich.html

"It should have sunk in by now that science fiction writers
who play prophet or forecaster don't necessarily have any more
insight into life's mysteries, especially regarding 'the future,'
than anyone else."

Irenist said...

Dale, I'm going to be doing an independent study paper for law school that tries to use the ancient rhetorical tradition to analyze modern legal argumentation. I'd be profoundly grateful if you had an opinion to offer on this question: Other than just diving right into Aristotle's "Rhetoric," is there a single-volume modern introduction to the tradition as a whole that you'd recommend?