Tagged: CC101

Language and Other Abstract Objects: Plato

Language and Other Abstract Objects was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 1981. It discusses the ideas of Plato studied in CC101. Internalization and externalization also explain why, for Plato, poetry corrupts our psyches. Given our psychology, there are two features of poetry which make it an especially potent drug. First, the music and  rhythms […]

Gilgamesh and David Ferry

In his recent work Gilgamesh: An Epic Obsession (http://bit.ly/TDl2BN), Theodore Ziolkowski takes a look at the ways in which the epic has manifested into our literature, art, music, and popular culture. The students of CC101 experienced this through David Ferry, whose translation of Gilgamesh they read this semester. David Ferry has also written: Bewilderment  (http://bit.ly/RwrwnD), which […]

Moses Parting the Red Sea

Earlier this week, Prof. Eckel lectured to the students of CC101 on the Book of Exodus. As an introduction to the topic, he showed the clip above from the 1956 feature film, The Ten Commandments.

MLK: “I have been to the mountaintop”

Prof. Eckel, during his lecture on the Book of Exodus this morning for the students of CC101, showed a clip of Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking on the night before his assassination in 1968.

Gilgamesh unveiling at Harvard

Core students may be interested in attending the installation of the “Gilgamesh” sculpture at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History this Thursday, September 13th starting at 5:30 pm. The unveiling will be accompanied by a reading from translator David Ferry. Visit http://www.geomus.fas.harvard.edu for more information regarding the event.

Six Quotes on Democracy

Prof. Samons: “How would Plato describe America? We are primed for tyranny.” “Plato would be so appalled by the television and internet that he would commend us for keeping it together this long.” Prof. Esposito: “Plato wants to know what Sophocles is trying to teach us in Ajax or Hecuba. It is not quite clear […]

Six Quotes: Fried on Plato

“Socrates is proposing radical censorship so the young receive the right message from a very young age.” “The best soul will be ruled by reason or calculation. Justice is when each part of the soul — calculating, spiritedness, and desire — is minding its own business.” “Can you know about politics in the same way […]

Six Quotes: Roochnik on Plato

“Is” is the simplest word in the English language and yet it is the hardest to understand in The Republic. Intelligible reality, what we think with our minds, is more real than the individual instances we attribute to our reality. What is clear about American politics, whether you are Democrat or Republican, is that knowledge […]

Analects of the Core: Fry on Homer’s genius

Stephen Fry’s BBC mini-series “Fry’s Planet Word” discusses The Odyssey: “Homer’s genius was to create vivid, archetypal scenes that transcended time and place. The Sirens episode is only a few paragraphs long, yet has become embedded in our collective memory.” Check out the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W4i6sWCbk0&t=8m22s

Analects of the Core: Thoreau on walls built of ruins

The walls that fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins. – Henry David Thoreau