Political theory and practice

Life, meaning, and death.

To promote a sense of belonging and being special, students also get name tags, something like this
with their name inserted. It is fiddly to do and I am not sure how well appreciated it is, but I labor on.

Sometimes we do another play reading, this is the Birds by Aristophanes, who also wrote Lysistrata mentioned above, which parodies Socrates. There is computer game based on the Euthyphro and sometimes that gets a work out. It is DOS based and most students today cannot cope with it!

I published a paper on Socrates years ago. ‘Socrates' Soul and Our Own,' Journal of Value Inquiry, 31 (1997) 2, pp. 167-176.

He was something of a character. He roamed the streets of Athens talking to all comers. He heard voices in the air sometimes. He never bathed. Dressed in rags. He sounds like a guy named Jack who hangs near the Seven-Eleven in Newtown. Jack stinks. Hears to voices in the air. Talks to all comers. Dresses in rags. What would Plato seem in him that I don’t, I wonder.

What is worse is that Socrates proposed ridiculous ideas like the equality of women! On this more later.

The death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David in 1787. Famous of course. Rendered thus

But I prefer the version found in a science fiction film called “Soylent Green.” At IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/
When Sol Roth decides it is time to go he does:

Such a contrast from the noisy, dirty, hot, crowded world outside.

The hemlock.